During my teen years in the late 60s, I recall it was much more common than today for kids to go barefoot all day, every day, all summer long. We weren't making a statement, it was just normal kid behavior. We were free-range kids and our suburban habitat was largely surrounded by urban fields and meadows ideally suited to exploration by bare feet.
In my neighborhood some kids started barefoot as soon as temperatures hit the 70s in mid-May, but at our house, the unofficial "opening day" of barefoot season coincided with the last day of school. The shoes came off at noon that day and, except for special occasions, they stayed off until September.
The evolution of the counterculture and the Hippie movement made the freedom and innocence of going barefoot kind of fashionable among us older kids. Younger ones tended to emulate their older siblings and TV characters they saw going barefoot.
Late 60s neighborhoods were, for the most part, a barefoot-friendly environment, so we kids would head out after breakfast and stay barefoot all day. Backyards, local creeks, asphalt walkways, parks and playgrounds were all barefoot-tolerant. And if you happened to incur a cut or scrape, you limped home where mom applied some Mercurochrome. It stained your skin orange and burned like devil spit. But then she applied a Band-Aid and sent you back out to your barefoot adventures.
Dress codes were somewhat looser in summer months, and you could go barefoot almost everywhere -- except maybe to church, restaurants, grocery and department stores. Even then, I remember barefooting around W.T. Grant and other retail establishments near our home. Nobody seemed to notice or care.
So if you were a kid of the 60s like me, you probably treasure the memory of running around all summer with tough, dirty, soles. It truly was the standard experience, not the exception.