Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/IURRe-m1PtA
or read his tale below…
I GOT SHOES YOU GOT SHOES
I got to have shoes you got to have shoes. Most everybody’s got to have shoes.
But, you know, sometimes barefoot is the best disguise.
If you’re barefoot, nobody can judge you by the quality, price, stylishness, source and brand-name of what’s encasing your feet.
Barefoot is always the best way to be—every child knows that.
But shoes eventually win out, the wearing of shoes eventually becomes mandatory and womandatory.
I had to start wearing shoes every day when I entered the First Grade at Northington Elementary School. That’s back when the school was physically located inside old Army and Prisoner of War buildings left over from World War II.
My father, Tommy Reed, was a carpenter—later, a city building inspector. But before that, he had been a coal miner when he was a boy, then a shoe salesman.
By the time I was old enough to wear serious shoes instead of fun ones (hard leather-soled shoes to replace the black and white gym tennis shoes and the summer sandals), Daddy declared that after extensive research and experience, he had determined that the best shoe store in Tuscaloosa County was Central Shoe Store at 519 Greensboro Avenue, Downtown.
As a career carpenter, my Father had once done some carpentry work at Central Shoe Store and had become friends with Paul Applebaum, who, with his father Abe, operated the shop. After their discussions of past shoe sales experience, it was decided that Paul Applebaum was the best judge of proper shoes and proper shoe fit.
Back in those days, nobody would dream of allowing a kid to pick out his or her own shoes.
When families were close and warmly connected to one another, parents had a great deal of say-so in their children’s lives. Shoe-purchasing trips were on the level of car-buying, since one was likely to own only two pairs of shoes at a time—Sunday shoes and school shoes.
Back then, there was no such thing as extravagant ownership of dozens of pairs of highly-priced shoes.
It was a serious affair, this shoe-buying thing. But it was also a comforting experience because it meant that my brother Ronny and I would have Daddy all to ourselves for a Saturday while the three of us traveled Downtown to Central Shoe Store.
Paul Applebaum would carefully measure our feet for length and width in a serious but friendly manner. The beauty of Paul Applebaum was that he paid close attention to his job and his customers. I liked him because he treated my Father, who was literally a quiet and humble carpenter, as seriously as his most well-to-do clients from the better side of the tracks.
And that new pair of heavier-than-lead thick-leather black wingtipped Sunday shoes took weeks to break in—you never knew if the fit was good till you’d pretty well worn the shoes down a bit.
Paul Applebaum and his generation of apprenticed shoe-sellers are gone now. Buying shoes today is just another fast-convenience off-the-rack experience. Nothing like those days when getting into a new pair of shoes was the result of hours of study, measure, contemplation, talking and comparing…and good-natured visitation with the county’s greatest shoe salesman, Paul Applebaum
© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.