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Shoes With Wings
Column
Shoes With Wings
Mr. Bootblack is a philosopher with distinct views of his own. He earns a living cleaning shoes. Once every two weeks he writes an article about footwear for GDS – and about the wearers.
Whether it was summer or winter, Joe always used to wear black wingtip shoes – and knowing him, they were from Budapest. He would come to my stall every day when I still had my shoe-cleaning stand at the Wall Street Metro Station and when he was still working in Wall Street every day where he was earning enough money to afford horse leather shoes. And in fact three identical pairs because, luckily, he was intelligent enough not to wear the same ones every day. But I’d have got him out of that habit anyway. But then Lehman came, and I didn’t see Joe for a few weeks. I seem to have lasted out at Wall Street much longer than many of my customers. And to tell you the truth, I could have stayed in Wall Street. Those who were still there wanted to make sure that everything stayed exactly the same for them. They kept up appearances, and that included their out appearance of course. Their shoes had to shine, and that’s what I lived on. So not everyone had to make sacrifices. But Joe and some of his friends did.
I moved to Grand Central Station because I had decided at some stage that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking at black spots all the time. Life is a miracle, and any stubborn insistence on life’s imperfections is like trying to find cellulite in a fairy. It’s not just impolite, it’s downright foolish. There’s always something you find. You just have to keep looking. The reason why I wanted to get away from Wall Street was not because stock prices had been dropping, but also people’s faces. And this is not my world. Gleaming shoes are just the beginning for me.
At first I hardly recognised Joe when he stood before me at Grand Central Station. He just looked so different. Instead of wingtip shoes, he was wearing suede boots.
“Good morning, Mr. Bootblack,” he said. – “Hi Joe,” I replied in exactly the same way I’d always said it, as if nothing had happened: “... Not much I can do for you. If suede is shiny then, hopefully, it’s still on the back of a horse, not on a shoe.” He grinned. Then he nodded. “Those times are over,” he said, and he sounded rather sad for a moment. “Joe,” I said, “certain times are always over. If they weren’t, there’d never be any new times.”
He thought a bit, and then he smiled. “And so there’s no need to spend your whole life in the same shoes?” He’d obviously understood. “You can change your shoes, Joe,” I said, “and I reckon sometimes it’s important to do so. But there’s one thing that’s absolutely vital.”
“They need to be clean?”
“No,” I said. “That’s a matter of style. There’s something else. Whatever shoes you wear, make sure they’re your own.”
