#56 - The Ultimate Footgear
Last Sunday morning we had a long and leisurely breakfast. Sunday breakfasts are kind of nice in the summertime. With all the windows open to let in the outdoors and happy bird songs on the morning air to bathe us in an atmosphere of cheerfulness, we have nowhere to rush off to this one morning of the week. And we can enjoy the double luxury of a pot of real coffee and reading the Sunday paper, which we find bulging from its box out front.
Susan and I sat at the table, swamped with reams of news stories, while our son, Lije, read the funny papers. I was reading in the magazine section about a woman with an IQ of 240 who was asked by the interviewer whether a tree falling in the forest makes any noise if no one is around to hear it. That question never taxed my intellect too much.
The brilliant woman’s response was laborious, and just as I was finally getting into her summation and expert opinion of what the answer was, I was suddenly alarmed by the sight of two large, puffy-looking things creeping up over my bare feet under the table. They were dirty-white, had multiple eyes, and each had a fat, lolling tongue. They weren't making much noise, but they were damned big and made the butter and marmalade drip off my English muffin onto my lap.
After my initial recoil, I formed my own independently brilliant deduction, summation and expert opinion that these things walking up my legs were my son's sneakers. They were huge! It was quickly apparent how much our boy had grown lately, and for the first time I was struck by how much sneakers have changed since I was a kid.
Sneakers are the ultimate foot gear - lightweight, colorful and fast. In my day, a boy wouldn't be caught in anything but high sneakers; regular sneakers were for girls. When you got a new pair, it was about the same as grown-ups getting a new car. The first outing into the neighborhood was a moment to be savored, if somewhat self-consciously, as friends gathered around to see what you had on your feet. We had just four color choices: red, white, blue and black; and two kinds: PF Flyers and Red Ball Jets. The crowning moment was when it came time to show off what they could do.
The church common across the street was the proving ground. It saw an awful lot of speeding, dodging, whizzing rubber in those days. I would judge that the green grass survived mainly because those flying sneakers barely, if ever, touched the ground. That was when sneakers were sneakers.
Today's version is a much bulkier affair. I guess they're fast enough, because I see kids racing about at a respectable clip, but I don't think they're quite as fast as their earlier prototypes. The sneakers climbing up my leg had these great, flopping tongues and about 20 feet of undone laces tangled around them, and they looked as if they ever got soaking wet, as mine always did, they’d weigh about 50 pounds, apiece.
Just the same, sneakers can't be beat for all-around footgear, for running, jumping and stopping on a dime. An interesting footnote to all of this: A friend of mine, on returning after 2 years in Point Barrow, Alaska, was showing me a handsome, hand-sewn pair of mukluks a native Alaskan woman had made for him. They had several kinds of animal skins and furs incorporated into them, and the stitching was a work of art. I asked him if all the natives wore such Mukluks today. "Nope," he said. "Most of them wear sneakers.”