Shoe Shine

I polished my shoes last night. During that comfortable hour I became immersed in a fascinating fusion of past and present. For the countless time as I brought the cardboard box containing the shoe-shining paraphernalia from the cabinet to the basement workbench I was reminded of my childhood. My father required us three boys to polish our own shoes well before we were teenagers. We each had our own brush, several old cloths, and two or three shared tins of polish stored in a beat-up cardboard box in a basement cabinet beneath the stairs.

As a small rebellious boy how I hated being forced to clean and shine my shoes. It was a mindless drudgery I had to be driven to, head hanging down, lips pursed together, pissed off but not daring to show it too openly. But, somewhere along the line, all that youthful antipathy to shoe-shining disappeared. Today, in my sixties, I derive quite a bit of satisfaction and pleasure from that simple act.

The still sturdy but much abused cardboard box in which I have stored the family’s shoe shining equipment for more than three decades contains all anyone could ask for in terms of bringing a dirty or scuffed pair back to brilliance. Two brushes for black shoes, two for burgundy and brown shoes. In both cases one brush is for the first coat of polish and the second brush, with finer and denser horsehair bristles, is for the second coat, if and when I’m ambitious enough to undertake the extra effort. Several old white athletic socks to apply the polish. Black edge dressing. Black dye. Saddle soap. Two different types of mink oil for waterproofing winter shoes and boots. Three or four containers of liquid polish for women’s shoes. And at least six cans of polish for men’s shoes. No doubt, I am well prepared to shine shoes.

If I remember correctly, the evolution from barely tolerating shoe shining as a necessary evil to enjoying it came during my first year in college. At that time, all male freshmen and sophomores at Saint Louis University had to take Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps courses, the dreaded ROTC, pronounced rot-C. We had to wear those cheesy blue uniforms to drill every Tuesday or Thursday and pretend we wanted to rip the life from our enemies, real or imagined. It was 1962 and the conflict in Viet Nam was still largely on the back burner but was moving inexorably toward full throttle. Highly polished shoes were an integral part of the uniform. Not just casually shined but spit-polished, or else demerits and extra drill were the order of the day.

For the uninitiated, a spit-polish meant exactly that. You spat into the can of polish, mixed it into a semi-gelatinous mess, and applied it to your shoes, working the mixture into a small section of the leather with a soft, damp cotton rag. The trick was to rub the polish into a small section of leather until your cloth was nearly dry and the polish was history. And then you did it all over. And again. And again. And again. Until your shoes sparkled like black diamonds. And I do mean sparkled.

The first several weeks in ROTC I went to a small shoe-shine parlor located in a barber shop in an old row of commercial stores on Grand Boulevard. But, at $5 a shine, it wasn't long before I was persuaded to do the job myself and save two and a half hours of hard-earned wages.

My first spit-polish, performed sitting on the kitchen floor, took over an hour. But afterwards I could have shaved in the resulting reflection. No exaggeration. It was spectacular. In some vague, poorly thought out way, the spit polish end result, a pair of shoes that shined spectacularly, appealed to my sense of order and neatness.

So, for the next two school years I spit-shined my shoes the night before each ROTC drill. And gradually all the time I put in working over those plain black shoes changed my attitude toward the entire shoe shining process. In a strange way, I even began to look forward to it. Somehow, someway, shining my shoes had been magically transformed from drudgery into a fundamentally relaxing process from which I derived no little satisfaction.

Now, when I begin the process of shining my dress shoes, I am no longer pissed off that I had to do it or impatient to get it over, as I once was. Strangely, it has become a pleasant and even soothing routine for me to take a couple ratty-looking, beat-up shoes and transform them into a highly polished and attractive pair. The ever so distinctive polish smell, the supple feel as the leather moves under the brush, the sound of the slapping strokes coupled with the physical rhythm all have a powerful and special appeal that is now part of me.

Life is indeed wonderful and amazing.