and then go out and do stuff. Didn’t make much difference what I was doing, it was always the same shoes. I’d wear them to school, play in them after school, and on saturday night, I’d scrape the detritus of several days off of them, slather some Kiwi shoe polish on, and buff them to as good a shine as I could muster for Sunday mass.

Oh, I had tennis shoes, but who played tennis? Besides, they’d get torn up so fast I would soon be barefoot, the rubber soles divorcing themselves from the canvas uppers so fast haitians are jealous. No, the only thing that would hold together is a good solid welted shoe, usually leather soles, usually Sears, usually $8.

Them was the days.

Now I find that if I have to walk any distance, I have to have my Danners- they are the only boots I’ve ever worn that will allow me to trudge endlessly through hunting or whatever. Of course I’m not about to wear them working, so I have a specific set of working boots that I wear, steel toed and heavy as an El Famous Burrito in your stomach at three PM. Then there are the yardwork boots, actually the former work boots with the almost-worn-out soles. And the work/church shoes, which stay clean and I wear in the office, or when driving because the work boots are so heavy the make it impossible to drive more than 20 miles.

So I have a lineup of shoes in the kitchen, which I’m constantly tripping over, and it drives me batshit crazy, I feel like Imelda. I need to make a hall tree to hold them all.