What I Learned From My Dad's Big Shoes

What I Learned Wearing My Dad’s Big Shoes

My dad, Jack Allen Kroh had really big, heavy, wonderful shoes that he took off at the back door when he came home from the shop. He had blue work shirts and pants, and big soft old blue hankies that he used to check the oil in customers’ cars. My mother hated that.

I thought for years that “blue collar” meant my dad, and I still respect men who work hard and have callused hands. My dad had a Goodyear patch over one pocket and his name over the other. On the back of his shirt, it said Clarion Vulcanizing Company. I remember poking my dad’s back, hitting letter after letter as I spelled out, “V-u-l-c-a-n-i-z-i-n-g.” It was the biggest word I could spell in grade school, and it meant those tire baking machines that cooked new tread on old tires.   

                But his shoes were the coolest of all. If they sat at the back door, it meant he was home. Maybe we could go to Cooks’ Forest for ice cream; maybe we could look for bears, or spot deer. All because those shoes brought my dad. They were so heavy that us kids, my sister Judy or my brother Jack, or I, had to lift them with both hands.

They were important shoes too. My dad couldn’t work without them and when his back hurt my mother always said, “It’s time to get new shoes.” New shoes were a great event, and my dad stopped frowning, as his wonderful new shoes made him feel better.

                My Aunt Jo—my father’s sister—and Uncle John lived right next door to our house. Their yard merged with our yard and we played in both, because my older cousins abandoned their playhouse and we took it over. My Aunt Jo never complained about kids in her yard and we stayed out of her iris beds and never tried to eat her crab apples, although we threw the fallen ones at the boys.

                And at night, when my mother was making dinner and she ran out of something, say margarine, she’d call, “Lessie, you run over to Aunt Jo’s and get me a stick of oleo.”

                I’d been chosen for a grown up job that called for grown up shoes.

I’d leave the TV blaring Huckleberry Hound, and run to the back door in my sock feet. Then I’d stick my feet in those huge, old, work, shoes taking up a fraction of the space. I’d hang onto the doorjamb for dear life to get me and the shoes over the threshold and out onto the back porch.

                 Thrilled it was dusk and I could be out after dark I clomp- clomped down the two porch steps and started across the yard. It was deliciously scary because I had to go slow to keep in my shoes. It was dark, and Scary Things might come for me. I never really knew what Scary Things were. For my sister they were bears, but for me they were just Scary Things. If they came when I had on the big shoes I couldn't get away fast enough. And I could never ever run away and leave the shoes. How would my father go to work if I did that?

                I loved to wear them because they were his. They were black with black laces and smelled like rubber, and my dad himself. They carried him around all day long. They were wonderful.

Once I got through the yard, I had to go up the hill to my aunt’s house. Now I will tell you that the older I got the smaller this hill got, but in the shoes with the Scary Things around it seemed like an “obstacle mount to the sky.” And it was always muddy right there. So I was extra careful to not step out of the shoes. A cold muddy sock got me in trouble with my mother, who did the wash, and my father, who had to wear a shoe with mud balls inside.

                Then I got to my Aunt’s door opened it and shouted, “It’s me Lessie. Can my mom have some oleo?”

                My aunt would come to the door with oleo and look at me in my huge shoes. She would laugh, a little sound like “Ah-heh, ah-heh,” that she made mostly in her nose. And home I would clomp with my prize, happy to be in the shoes.  

                Today I have size eight feet, but I still take my shoes off when I come in from outdoors. I have to walk five minutes up to CVS for butter if I need to finish dinner. My shoes are not as cool, and my father and my aunt are gone.

But it does seem to me like we would all be better off if we could stick our heads in our neighbor’s back door and yell, “Hi, I need a stick of butter,’ and get what we needed with or without great shoes.