Remember When...

When I was a little boy the only tennis shoe, which was referred to as a "sneaker", was a U.S. Ked.

You always got a new pair for school.

A new pair of Keds was like getting a new laptop or iPod or iPhone now.

One color...really two if white is a color. Black. With a white rubber circle at the ankle bone.

Then came red and then white. On my first day of second grade I went to school in my brand new, white Keds and some asshole kid...who probably grew up to be an asshole adult...stepped on my sneakers. On purpose.

I cried. When I went home for lunch I told my mother. She was angry but didn't do anything. What could she do? Call the school? Call the other kid's mother? Demand satisfaction on my behalf?

Yes. But she didn't do any of those things. Which is ultimately ok. It was just a pair of sneakers. Not the end of the world. Nor life or death.

Now...retrospectively.

But then...Holy Cow! It was the end of life as I had known it.

My sparkling clean, new out of the box, wonderful, coveted Keds.

Asshole!

So...you really only had three pair of shoes if you were a boy...two if you don't count the boots, known as galoshes...or rubbers to protect your shoes.

The shoes were brown or Cordovan, whatever that is. You had a little tin of shoe polish and you had to shine your shoes or you looked like a schlump. And your father shined his shoes so you wanted to be like Daddy. With the same haircut too. A crewcut. On Saturday morning. With the combs in the bluegreen jar with the mystery liquid that made the combs do magic.

But the shoes were from Buster Brown. Period. Not from some other place. Buster Brown.

Not Thom McCan. And what was up with that spelling anyway? Thom?
It's Tom. And McCan? No, it's McCann, thank you very much. No "H" and two "Ns". Tom McCann.

And then there were those galoshes. Galoshes. What a great word. Galoshes. Big black affairs with silvery metal buckles that you never buckled and then paid the price for that negligence by having snow fall into your galoshes making your thin socks all wet. And then cold and very uncomfortable.

Keds. Buster Browns (with accompanying rubbers for rainy days.) And Galoshes.

That was it. That was the extent of my shoe inventory.

Simple and to the point.

Ahhh...the good old days.

Before color TV. All in Black and White. And not half bad at that...