At my Dad’s memorial service on Saturday, January 17, 2009, when I got up to share my memories of Dad, I said, “I remember Dad taught me how to shine his shoes. He'd pay me 35¢ and I was thrilled.”
My Dad would say to me, “How would you like to earn some money?”
I knew exactly what he had in mind. He’d bring the shoeshine kit down from the cupboards in the service porch, place a bar stool in the middle of the kitchen, and sit down, hoisting a foot up on the little shoeshine kit. I learned much later in life, he made that wooden kit.
I was taught there was a system to polishing my Dad’s shoes. He’d select the color. First, one shoe up on the foot stool. Apply the polish. Shoe is lowered. Other shoe up, apply polish. Go back to the first shoe on the “last.” Use the brush with bristles. Alternating shoes, after the brush, was the fuzzy buffer and finally the big long rectangular soft cloth. It was rolled up when not in use. To use it, one would unroll it so both ends were exposed. Then rolling a little bit of each end, it was held in both hands. First, moving it swiftly back and forth across the top of the toes, the tip in front, each side respectively and then the heel. Sometimes I had a hard time with the heel and my Dad would help take over.
In an effort to clear the clutter, I’m going to make the wooden shoe shine box into a plant holder in the backyard. In researching what to do with old shoe polish, I discovered that shoe polish can go in the trash. Yes, some of these canisters are very old. Some of the cans have 33¢ painted right on the canister. Lincoln and Kiwi brand is now up to $4 a canister. I will empty most of the contents in the trash but keep a couple of the canisters to reuse for something else.
This is my Dad’s legacy he’s passed along to me. I will think of him often, when I look at the shoeshine box in our garden.
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