TRUE STORIES

He pops the boogie woogie rag
The Chattanoogie shoe-shine boy.
           — Red Foley
 
I polished my shoes last weekend.

I did it while bathed in a lazy slope of Sunday sun out on the front porch glider. Andre the Labradorian, fresh from a round of tennis ball fetching, offered to help me make it a spit shine — but I shooed him to the side.

Just like I was taught by my parents and grandpa, Matt, I first spread newspaper on the floor to keep from staining it. Then I wiped each shoe down with a damp cloth (most times, as a boy, I’d also have to scrape crusted mud off with a butter knife before I could do this). Next, I lifted the lid on the shoebox I made in Mr. Quenoy’s woodshop class at age 14 and began the slow ritual of an old school shine.

A worn toothbrush is best for the back-and-forth application of the paste where sole meets uppers. I found one in the bottom of the box and worked the paste into the groove. Then, with an old green washrag, I applied the KIWI polish (brown) in a slow, circular motion. As I did, I found myself back in our family’s bungalow across from the high school; on the back porch, polishing my substantial, black dress shoes in preparation to be an altar boy at my first Sunday high Mass at Sacred Heart. Boy priest on the hardwood stage of it all.

As I methodically buffed my loafers with a soft brush, I recalled how once I’d taken a whole afternoon and shined everybody’s shoes. What a pleasure it was to see the whole family’s footwear gleaming on the linoleum. What quizzical, grateful looks I got from my parents and siblings when they discovered what I’d done.

Using a cotton sock turned inside out and pulled over my hand, I finished bringing my shoes to a full shine with brisk, rhythmic strokes. Here I remembered college ROTC and the effort it took to get a “spit shine” on my black, army-issue shoes so as not to get hit with demerits at weekly drill. This required removing the laces, using damp cotton balls to apply repeated layers of polish and an old nylon stocking for the final buff to a high shine.

Harry’s Hat Shop, located adjacent to the Fox Theatre in Pittsburg when I was growing up, had a real fine shine parlor where a droopy-eyed, built low-to-the-ground, shoeshine master known as “Possum” could make the oldest of leathers look like new.

Hanging around, waiting for a ride after summer matinees at the show, I lingered more than once by the late afternoon doorway watching Harry (always well groomed in high-waisted slacks and dress shirt) as he cleaned and blocked hats at the steamer and Possum (in jeans and T-shirt) as he crouched over shoes on brass footings below a row of raised seats and methodically shined cowboy boots, loafers, captoes, wingtips and more. Possum applying the paste with his fingertips and snapping his cotton shine cloth — just like the Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy in the Red Foley song — to signal the gleaming shoes were finished. I loved not only the vision of it but the smell flowing out onto the wide sidewalk — south to join with the perfume and soda fountain scents of Crowell’s Drug Store, north to mingle with the popcorn smell of the theater and east across the street to blend with the intoxicating mixture of printer’s ink, candy and tobacco at Fogarty’s newsstand.

Years later, when I was a high school junior, I bought a pair of cordovan and black saddle shoes at Ramsay’s and climbed up one afternoon to place my feet on the brass footings for a professional shine; the passersby through the shadowed plate glass on the sidewalk looking in at me. Me, Harry and Possum in a vintage hat shop / shoeshine scene reminiscent of a William Hopper painting.

With today’s world of instant shoe polishes and fanciful applicators, the art of shining shoes is being lost. But let’s face it. If you want a natural looking sheen on your leathers, you have to go to traditional shoeshine.

I’ve known since boyhood that you don’t have to have a high-dollar, swanky pair of shoes made of Italian leather to look good. An old-fashioned shine on a substantial, inexpensive pair will go a long way toward making you stand out.

To wit, the day after I polished my loafers last week, I wore them work at PSU. That afternoon, my nephew, Khalil, an alumni back from Chicago via Kansas City, popped in to see me in my office.

After a half hour or so of visiting about his adventures doing theater and stand up in the big city, he looked down and said, “Man, those are some nice looking shoes.”

“Like ‘em huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Twenty-five bucks.”

“No!”

“Yep. Just shined them.”

J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-0499 or jtknoll@swbell.net.