Directory Listing Configuration

I'm trying to get Apache (1.3.27) to list contents of a particular
directory for me. It's proving to be difficult for me. Here's what's
happening:

Until now, I have not loaded the mod_autoindex module in Apache. If this
module is disabled, I can't get Directory Listings to work at all --
even if I have "Options Indexes" set in my configuration. I guess my
first question is whether or not that is expected? The documentation I'm
reading seems to suggest that all I need is "Options Indexes".

Anyway, when I did enable it, it worked too well -- it enabled directory
listings for every directory on my whole site (including /). I only
wanted directory listings for /foo/bar. So I removed "Options Indexes"
from the root directory and gave it only to the /foo/bar directory. This
worked OK for /foo/bar (I got a listing there, as I wanted), but when I
tried to access "/", I got an error message saying I didn't have
permission to access / on this server. I checked in the error logs and
it says "Directory index forbidden by rule". I don't understand this.

It's disabled by rule because I want it to go and look for any one of
the files I have set up in my DirectoryIndex directive (index.html,
index.shtml, index.php, etc...) -- which are present. I know this
because if I disable mod_autoindex, the pages listed in DirectoryIndex
load automatically. But then of course I don't get the directory listing
for /foo/bar. So I'm stuck between all or nothing. Any idea what I'm
doing wrong?

Thanks,
Brian