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Man Prepares for Walk In Well-Traveled Shoes
By DIANE EICHER For the Star-Herald SCOTTSBLUFF —
Shoes that have walked on four continents will get some additional mileage Sunday when Jim Metzger joins the CROP Walk for Hunger.
But Metzger isn't sure the shoes will be able to finish the 14-mile course — the soles are a bit tattered.
"Ill [sic] walk as far as the shoes will let me," he said. Nearly 20 years old, the tan-colored boots have been resoled three times, and Metzger said if he'd realized earlier that this walk was approaching. he would have had them resoled once again.
Before his retirement Metzger was an irrigation advisor with the Agency for International Development to the Turkish and Jordanian governments, and was involved in special assignments which took him to Nepal, India and Japan. The shoes covered a lot of terrain in these countries during 1955- 1967, he said.
"THERE WERE a good many times I walked from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea in these shoes," he said.
Last year Metzger went to Colombia, South America to redesign irrigation systems on two plantations there, as a volunteer with the International Executive Service Corps. Once again, the shoes accompanied him.
Sunday the shoes will lead him in a walk for an organization Metzger feels is worthwhile — CROP, the community hunger appeal of Church World Service. He helped lay out some irrigation systems provided by CROP monies, and became acquainted with many of the persons involved in CROP, he said.
THE CROP walk at Scottsbluff begins at the First United Presbyterian Church and follows a route that will lead walkers out of the city on Highway 29, over Mitchell Pass, past the Scotts Bluff national monument, through Gering and Terrytown and back to the starting point. Metzger said he thinks walking on concrete surfaces such as those he'llencounter Sunday is more difficult (at least on the shoes) than some of the areas he covered while in the foreign service.
Metzger says he never planned to give his shoes such a colorful history — "It just happened."
"They're comfortable and I did a lot of walking in them," he commented, and now the shoes have a special significance.
And when this Sunday's walk is over, said Metzger as he showed the worn shoe- bottoms, he plans to have the boots resoled, possibly in preparation for some more walking adventures.
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Metzger Memories
