WHITE SHOES IN SUMMER

See that bottle of shoe white? Its presence in the shot – just one I took at random in the Depot at Gibson Mill in Concord, NC - wasn’t significant until I just noticed it today and put it together with my memory of white shoes in the summer. 

As she did the rest of the year to keep our school and dress shoes looking good, almost every week in summer Mom would lay out sheets of newspaper and have us bring out our white shoes to be polished. Shake, shake, shaking the bottle, then getting some of the liquid on the little white fuzzy pad used to spread the polish on the shoes. Once hey dried she would polish the chalky finish to a nice shine with a soft rag.  Every once in a while, as she re-shook the bottle during the job, the little pad would be off kilter and the polish would go all over the place.  That was a nasty mess, especially if it got on her clothes.

I’m also reminded of a picture of my cousin and me, both aged about three. In it both of us are wearing brown sandals. I remember my Mother telling me, when we were going through her photo album many years later, that my cousin first had white sandals which were very hard to come by during the war years of the 40’s.  She complained so bitterly that her Mom finally had to get her a pair of brown sandals like mine. See that? I was a fashionista at an early age!