Shoe Trees

The face in my mirror is not my Dad’s face…not exactly. Dad’s eyes turned down a little more at the outside points, while his mouth tended to lift ever-so-slightly at the corners, in an appealing sort of semi-permanent, somewhat remote, and sardonic smile. My own eyes are set more level and lack the childlike warmth that shined forth from Dad’s, and my mouth turns down a bit at the corners reflecting my more cynical view of the world and my less generous spirit. Aside from the asymmetry resulting from a pulverized jawbone, Dad’s face was more pleasing than mine, and certainly he was far more beautiful as a young man. Our head shape is the same blocky cylinder, tapering from the face and back of the head to a slightly narrower top than bottom. We have both lived our lives without recognizable necks, carried through the world in stumpy, hulking, mesomorphic bodies that defy the best efforts of clothiers and dieticians. We were born to be gladiators, I think; thick, dense bones that resist fractures, and tank-like, underslung carriages that are all but impossible to bowl over.

Aside from his genetic gifts, my Dad apparently helped to construct me more than I realized (or bothered to think about) for many, many years. The signs were everywhere; I just couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge them. Or perhaps I unconsciously veered from them fearing that too-close examination would reveal the unthinkable: I am very much like my Father.

Was Dad a bad man, or even a bad example? Well, no…and yes. He had demons. Whether they came out of the bottle to swallow him up, or whether he sought to fend them off with his jug of Seagram’s 7 will never be known, and I’m not sure it’s important. He could be mean and spiteful under the influence or he could be sad and alone, unfathomable, melancholy. He could also be joyous, even giddy. For most of my life between, say, twelve and thirty I was obsessed with his shortcomings, and determined to be unlike him. My love of him and my hatred for him swirled in a dark cyclonic soup through all of my adolescence and drove most of the events of my life in the late 50s and 60s. Only in the first ten years of my life and the last ten years of his did I give him credit for anything. Only in my childhood and in that short and truncated end stage could I love my Dad wholeheartedly without resentment, blame, or qualification.

Oh, man. I don’t get to think much anymore. I am a wage slave. What I do to earn bread and board is meaningless to me. Worse, I am completely irrelevant as the world spins on its axis. And I don’t get time to think very often…

This morning, on the short trip from the coffeepot to my office, I picked up my plain black shoes from the shedding place near the kitchen door and carried them to my closet, placing them between brown ones just like them, and a pair of tan suede slip-ons (Big 5; $20.) With no conscious thought, I picked up a pair of cedar shoe trees, inserted them into both shoes with a single-handed and very practiced motion, and snapped them down in place. When I started to raise up, a stray thought happened; all of my shoes have trees. Among most middle-class men who aren’t fashionistas, shoe trees aren’t required. Some don’t have a single pair. Where did I get THAT? Dad, of course. He always had shoe trees in his “good” shoes. In those days, most men only had “regular” shoes and “good” shoes, not the ten or twelve pair common today. When your “good” shoes became worn, or your “regular” shoes wore OUT, then the “good” became the new “regular”, and it was off to Thom McAn, Sears, or Penney’s for some new “good” shoes. Dad’s shoe trees were simple things made of perforated stamped metal and very stiff wire, and he only needed to have one pair for his “good” shoes. He was so constantly in his “regular” ones that his feet were the original and god-given shoe trees. Dad never tried to instruct me on the virtues of using shoe trees. It’s just something that was a part of him, and that became a part of me automatically.

Pop was my role model of choice. A policeman with rigid personal habits and codes. A man respected in the community, and well-known in our smallish town. A man with no known vices. A predictable, stable, even-handed man. He smoked a pipe, which smelled wonderful, and Dad smoked cigarettes, which were low-rent and stank up rooms, cars, clothing, hair, and everything else. I was Pop’s first blood grandson, and he doted on me. Nana and Pop never fought. (Of course they did, but it was their strict code that no other living person should ever be privy to disagreements between them.) Mom and Dad ALWAYS fought, and their disagreements were unconstrained by location, time, or bystanders. But despite my admiration of Pop and my adoption of him as the person I wanted to be most like, it is my Dad’s influence I see stamped all over my life. I can’t hold him to blame for my worst habits and actions because apparently, I always had free will to chose what to emulate. I never did smoke cigarettes or drink much. I was never a gregarious party animal. But I do use shoe trees. I do like to take naps. I am somewhat manic, though this is probably a mix of genetics and learned behaviors.

All day I have been thinking of Dad’s influence on me, and how his posterity has been more than just memories of him and few pictures. When Terry and I were preschoolers and into my first or second grade years, we would jump on Mom and Dad’s bed to be cradled in the crook of his massive arms and barrel chest. We would get tickled, giggle uncontrollably (all three of us), and beg Dad to stop, but we really didn’t want him to. After a bit, Mom would say, “Carty, stop it…let them breathe!” So he would stop for a minute, then we would start urging him to start again. He took me with him to hang out with his young buddies, and on deer hunts and camping trips. He was just a boy himself, not yet thirty during most of these times. He taught me to shoot his old 30-30 and a .22 pistol. He taught me to solder, paint, puzzle out electric circuits, and best of all, not to ever be intimidated by something mechanical or electrical that was outside my experience. He taught me to examine things, to puzzle things out, to figure out how to fix things. He taught me to be curious. And he probably did it all without understanding that I would one day look in the mirror and see…him.

I always loved you Dad, even when I thought I hated you. I never understood how much I would miss you, or what a huge part of my life you were. I never would have believed that I would look in the mirror one day in the twenty-first century, and think “I look so much like my Dad. Good.”

Thanks for the shoe trees Dad, and thanks for my life. It’s been good.