Why am I writing about shoes? In his meager salary during the Great Depression, I couldn’t understand why my father made sure the family had a good quality shoe. All shoes were leather I thought, and were the same style whether they cost $5.00 or $15.00
In the winter of 1942, when I came home from ice-skating on Crotona Park Lake, in the Bronx, I discovered why I am writing about shoes today.
“Pa, did you have ice skates when you were growing up?”
“No, we had shmattehs (rags). On that we skated.”
In the shtetl – the village where he was born, he wore these bandaged rags as shoes during the colder months and went barefoot during the summer. When his feet stopped growing, his mother had his shoes made at a village shoemaker.
At seventeen my father was sent to live as an apprentice to a starving tailor in another shtetl in Lithuania. From an environment of poverty, meager meals and hard work, he emigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen. He eventually found seasonal employment in Manhattan’s Garment District, and then later married my mother.
Because he wore shmattehs around his feet in the winter until his feet stopped growing, the purchase of shoes in our family was a major event. A nickel carfare for the subway brought us to the Coward Shoe Store located on the ground floor of The Empire State Building. A multitude of lights reflecting off the marble interior overwhelmed me. I wondered what was happening behind all those doors.
A glass door let us into the gray-carpeted store. A salesman, dressed in a dark suit greeted us as if we were family. I was asked to step on a long, metal ruler with a cup at its heel end, and then the salesman slid a bar towards my toe.
“Size seven,” he said. “I think you want black.”
My new shoes, the same style as my old scruffy black leather shoes were placed in a box along with an engraved Coward Shoe shoehorn and an extra pair of shoelaces.
Eventually, when Pa was convinced that a local shoe store had good quality shoes, our trip to The Empire State Building came to an end.
Nearby Wilkins Avenue was a broad, commercial street, two blocks long. These blocks were equivalent to four average city blocks. At its south end, near the Freeman St. subway station was the Vanity Boot Shop.
The family accompanied Ma when she stepped out of the store in black, mid-heel shoes with small patent leather tips. She hardly wore them. Usually her feet were tucked into flannel slippers that coordinated well with her faded blue housecoat.
I thought my father was extravagant when he bought a pair of pricey, black Florsheim shoes, but considering his childhood, he earned them. For me, the shoes that were highly recommended by the Vanity salesman were the same black shoes as the grainy shieldlike toe box that was purchased at the Coward Shoe store. To guarantee a proper fit, he led me to what seemed to be a wooden console. It was called a fluoroscope. Via X-Rays, it showed how my feet fit inside the shoes. The salesman called for my father.
“What are you showing me?” Pa asked.
Using a pointer, he said,
“Those are the bones of his feet. You can see that they are not squeezed into his shoes. They fit just right.”
“I don’t see anything,” replied Pa. ” How do they fit, Danny?” They were stiff, but I approved.
Madam Curie died of radiation overdose. Rich kids who had a few pair of shoes were also getting an unhealthy exposure to the rays. Eventually, the fluoroscope was forbidden to be used in any shoe store.
My older brother had a G.O. (General Organization) book from Junior H.S. that had a discount coupon for Adler’s shoe store. He walked out of the store with a pair of state-of-the art, square, raised toebox shoes. My corduroy knickers highlighted the same black- shield shoe style until I entered Junior High School and then, my G.O. book allowed me to enter Adler’s world of fashion.
My uncle, who came to my parent’s wedding and celebrated in-house with them for sixty-plus years knew how to prolong the life of his shoes. After purchasing his shoes at the Vanity Boot Shop, he went directly across the street to F. W. Woolworth, and bought four, heavy metal shoe taps. When he came home, he nailed the taps to the heel and front of each shoe. My mother, forbid him to wear them in our apartment because the taps made deep nicks in our linoleum flooring. When these shoes outlived their life expectancy, he removed the taps and they evolved into slippers. It wasn’t long before an unsightly peel covered their entire surface. My brother, who slept in the same room as my uncle was repulsed at the sight of those grungy shoes. He threw them out of the bedroom window and onto the roof of an adjacent A&P. My mother, embarrassed that the neighbors might see them, gave a kid a dime to climb up a pole to retrieve the shoes. Somehow these shoes disappeared two weeks later.
Through high school I had one pair of Adler’s cordovan brown, square-toed shoes and a pair of sneakers. Today my closet displays shoes for every occasion, formal wear, dress wear, casual wear, three pair of sneakers and two pairs of slippers. The owner of Vanity Boot Shop could have retired had I purchased them at his store.
Perhaps I should have had a shmatteh experience in order to appreciate the abundance in my closet.
danielwolfebooks@aol.com