Ramblings of History: Ancient and Modern

Have you ever come across anything strange lying on the side of the road as you’ve driven by? Maybe some fast food debris? Pants? Maybe a body? If so, it was probably just my great uncle; some of you that have travelled on the Eyre Peninsula may be familiar with a sign between the cities Whyalla and Port Augusta, reading “Long Sleep Plain”. This was erected to honour my great uncle, a character well known throughout the peninsula named Percy J Baillie.

P.J. moved fairly frequently during his lifetime. One of his moves was from Whyalla to Adelaide. On the night that he was farewelled from there he’d had a bit to drink, but the others at the party were under the impression that he had left and was driving to Adelaide anyway. However, he didn’t make it very far; he only made it to where the sign now stands, on the property of his friend Mr John Nicholson (although Mr Nicholson was unaware of this at the time). Perce parked his van and decided to go to sleep. He slept through the night, the entirety of the next day, the next night and awoke on the morning of the day after that, believing that he’d only been asleep for a few hours. Mr Nicholson soon corrected him when he found Percy on his property and figured out what had happened. But this isn’t the story I’m here to tell you today.

What I really want to talk to you about is the time Aysha and I found a pair of shoes on the roadside just out of town.

Late one night, we’d visited our super-mega-awesome-foxy-hot friend Rachel to watch Madagascar 2, and were returning home in my car. We were approaching a bridge, still about 5 minutes from the outskirts of town, when Aysha spotted something out of the window.

“Why on earth would somebody leave a pair of shoes behind when walking or driving?” Aysha asked me indignantly, and perhaps rhetorically. I frowned and gave her question careful consideration.

“Well, maybe someone was walking along, when they were struck with a thought. Maybe they thought to themself, ‘you know what would be awful? If somebody was walking along here and they’d forgotten to wear shoes! They’d be so uncomfortable, and there’s nothing they could do about it because the nearest shoe store is a very long walk away, and in the opposite direction to what I’m currently travelling!’” I replied. “But then they’d think, ‘I know! I’ll take off my shoes, so that when they reach this point they can put them on and their feet will be saved. Yeah. What a good plan. I’m awesome.’”

Aysha was awed, and laughed heartily at me, because my suggestion was so good that she was too filled with glee to hold in.

Aysha was so awed and filled with happiness by the brilliance of this plan that she burst into a fit of laughter.

“I thought that you were saying that you were awesome for coming up with that story!” She gasped.

“No, the person who was nice enough to leave their shoes thought they were awesome for doing such a good deed. But aren’t I awesome for coming up with that? I believe I just solved our mystery.” I responded.

I believe that Aysha then became tactfully silent, save for occasional uncontrollable giggles. The topic came up again at a later date, this time when Aysha and I were driving around town. We passed a power line over which somebody had thrown a pair of shoes with the laces tied together.

“I wonder why people hang shoes like that. It must be really annoying for the power companies to get them down, if they ever do. The people who do it must be dicks,” I mused aloud.

Then, a thought dawned on me. “Maybe they don’t suck! Maybe the person who left it there was a really good natured but dumb superhero, who was just flying along, when they suddenly thought, ‘you know what would be horrible? If somebody was walking or flying along here when they suddenly realised they didn’t have any shoes on! They’d be so embarrassed! I’d better take my shoes off and leave them here to protect their dignity,’ and then they’d take them off, knot the laces together and drop them. Unfortunately it wouldn’t occur to them that we mere mortals can’t reach the shoes to get them down, and if we tried to get them down some other way we’d probably electrocute ourselves. So really, the shoes are just taunting the shoeless ones. Maybe it was a supervillain who left them there?”

Aysha replied quietly, “I thought that people threw them there as a signal that people could buy drugs in that spot.”

Either or.