It was a big deal and a rite of passage for the males in my extended family when Uncle Robert gifted you a set of Florsheim shoes on your sixteenth birthday. He was a shoe salesman. He knew shoes. He knew feet.
He always carried his Brannock device, the metal device that measured foot length, width, and arch length commonly found in shoe stores of old. He would measure you up before your birthday, so the gift was not a surprise but a statement.
He not only believed in the cliché that “shoes make the man” but that saying was embossed on his business card and also on your birthday card, tucked neatly in the tissue paper in the top of the shoebox. Like I said, he was a shoe salesman.
That aphorism not only signified that you were moving out of your boyhood to become a man, but it also announced your social standing to the world around you and supposedly signified that you were of good character.
I guess that well worn cliché, like everything else in this world during the last decade or so, will need to be resoled now that the made-for-TV Pedophile-in-Chief is not only requiring the simpering slaves in his cabinet to wear his favorite Florsheim shoes, but gifting them those shoes to ensure their obeisance.
If shoes ever made the man and defined character, watching these men march in lockstep, wearing comically ill-fitting symbols of their subservience, it certainly reveals (again) just how character-less these bumbling bunions are as they trip over themselves to please their master.
My uncle tired to set us on a course for success. I’m sure he’s turning over in his grave.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 
@warnercrocker.com
I came home with a cheap pair of shoes. My dad looked them over and took me right back to the mall. We returned the cheap shoes and he bought me a pair of Florsheim's. I'd been in size 12 for a couple of years, so he figured my feet were done growing, and he was right. He explained that I could have the heel or the sole or both replaced indefinitely with Florsheim's and he was right. I had those shoes for years. My dad was a "right to repair" guy before it was an issue.
As for the rest of your comments, they are too depressing for me to elaborate on them. 😞
LikeLiked by 1 person
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile