Recollections of a barefoot girl (Storytelling Sunday)

The first Sunday of every month, Sian, of From High in the Sky, hosts a gathering of storytellers called "Storytelling Sunday." For 2013, she has suggested that we pick something precious to us and share its story. So, on this wintry Sunday, I am sharing a story of summertime . . . a story of cake walks and goldfish and one very special rooster.  To read other stories, click on this link.
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Barefoot and carefree.
That's how I remember the summers of my youth. Tan legs, cut off jeans, and calloused feet so black by the end of the day that no amount of scrubbing could get them clean. 
I traveled everywhere on those feet . . . to the park at the end of my street, to the 7-11 to buy candy, to a hiding place during our endless games of hide-and-seek, and to the cool shade of a friend's garage to play ping-pong.
And, once a summer, I walked up to my elementary school for the summer carnival. It wasn't the biggest fair of the summer. That honor belonged to the "Corn Festival," which ran for three full days and had actual, honest-to-God carnival rides like a Ferris Wheel and spider buckets.  No, the school carnival was a much smaller affair - with booths made by parents and prizes that tended to the small and plastic.  
No matter, I enjoyed filling a brown paper bag full with pink monkeys and yellow giraffes, along with the occasional super ball and paper straw full of colored sugar.  If I were lucky (and I usually was), I would also carry home at least one plastic bag filled with water and a gold fish. A reward for my skill at throwing a ping pong ball into a glass bowl.  
Every year, my hands were also filled with a home made cake, won at my favorite booth - the cake walk. The cake walk was always located at the far end of the school, in front of the first grade class rooms because that was the only place on campus with a piece of cement large enough for the organizers to draw a circular path with 24-36 numbered squares.  Every year I would trek over to the cake walk area, give the parent in charge my ticket, and walk around the circle until the parent's helper lifted the needle from the record and stopped the music.  The parent in charge would then pull a number from a bowl and read it out loud.  Inevitably, inexplicably, I would look down at my dirty, bare feet and there, carefully written  in chalk was the number which had just been called.  I would smile, choose a cake from those displayed on a table in the shade, and pad on home.
One year, when I opened my brown paper bag, I found a ceramic rooster. I have no recollection of winning it, but am certain I won it at a school carnival. I have kept it with me for almost fifty years. It sat on the trophy shelf in my room during high school and traveled with me to college and grad school. I moved it from apartment to condo and finally to our house. Now, it sits on the window ledge in my kitchen. A reminder of happy, carefree, summertime days.