With my first real paycheck, I bought a typewriter. I may have had a pair of red shoes as a child -- I certainly did if you count oxblood, because I recall how disappointed I was when I had to scuff-coat them brown -- but I'm not sure they weren't patent leather.
Whether red or patent leather, I once had a pair of shoes that could be worn only to church and to parties, at a time and place when even people who had stopped growing gave their all-occasion shoes an extra polish on Saturday night. Since growing up, I've been lucky to have shoes at all -- I was downright heartbroken when I couldn't get into the jackboots that were all the rage, and after my old shoe-fitter retired, I spent several years wearing sneakers and stage shoes. Luckily, the period when cotton house slippers from China were in fashion was at the beginning of this time -- I pinned them on and wore them everywhere, even hiking. I've been shod ever since learning that one can buy Red Wings at a shoe store that's near a factory, or one that advertises steel-toed shoes. Red Wing discontinued the model that looked half-way decent, of course, and replaced the discreet pressed-into-the-leather wing with a red billboard on the heel, but I cover that with periodic applications of black permanent marker. -- Joy Beeson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather) west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where we are having our first real snow of the year, and it's soggy. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
