“Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show,
— Rock and roll standard written and recorded by Carl Perkins in 1955. It was a hit song for Perkins in 1955 and for Elvis Presley in 1956.
Three to get ready now go, cat, go
But don’t you, step on my blue suede shoes.”
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I never noticed how many songs have been written about them until I wrote last week’s column. Shoes, that is.
“Old ladies’ shoes,” someone remarked on my column last week. “What’s that?”
“You’ve seen ’em,” I said. “Shoes that, let’s call them mature, women wore when I was a kid. Black. Lace up. Stocky heels. Back when, to a youngster, an older woman was one that had graduated from high school.
It was a memory on the fly. Popped into my mind as I was writing about two “mature” women visiting, one of them my grandmother. Back when shoes were real.
I like nice looking shoes. Leather shoes that are comfortable and last longer than temporary government programs.
Shoes like I wore to school. When tennis shoes were all high-top black-and-white lace up Keds or P.F. Flyers. Because other than cowboy boots, that’s all there was. High-top tennis shoes and real leather shoes.
Shoes that Mom made sure I polished every Saturday night, for Sunday morning church service. Shoes that were sold in shoe stores where clerks measured the customer’s foot to ensure the correct size. Then double checked by gently pressing the shoe to see where the toes were. Shoes that could be purchased in all sizes and all widths.
Shoes worn until the heels were run down and the soles were more holy than righteous. Well-worn shoes that weren’t thrown away but taken to the local shoe repair shop. Where the smell of leather lingered. Where the proprietor wore a canvas apron and used industrial strength sewing machines to bring shoes back to life. Repaired, polished, and returned to the customer shined to a gloss that dazzled in the sunlight.
I remember buying my first pair of leather loafers at Beall’s Department Store in downtown Mount Pleasant. Working after school during my sophomore year. Virgil Tolbert was the manager, Gerald Birdwell the assistant manager, and classmate Janice White’s mother was a salesclerk. Where Saturdays, I wore a sport coat and tie, and sold men’s clothing and shoes. Wearing frehly polished cordovan Bass Weejun loafers for which I had paid $4.95 out of my average $20 weekly earnings.
Then, in the early 1980s, the tennis shoe craze catapulted sportswear smack dab in the mainstream of “acceptable anywhere” dress. Overnight, everyone was wearing tennis shoes—with everything. In all colors and styles. For all occasions. Everywhere.
That’s when a friend noted that she thought it might be an excellent time to buy stock in one of the trendy tennis shoe brands. I sure hope she did. It was probably a good idea. She’s probably rich today. And probably owns lots of shoes.
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Well, she walked in the shoe store, picked out a shoe,
She tried on a twelve, but that wouldn’t do.
Betty Lou got a new pair of shoes,
Betty Lou bought a new pair of shoes.
— Song lyrics by Bobby Freeman.
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I watched shoe styles change again with my children in the 1990s. Daughter Robin was a teenager. “I like those,” she proclaimed, pointing to a store window in the San Antonio mall.
“Those combat boots,” I asked? Still wearing cordovan Bass Weejun loafers. For which I paid a lot more than $4.95.
“They’re Doc Martin’s, Dad,” she said. With an “Ugh.”
Those shoes would be the first of several pairs of combat boots … I mean shoes … that Robin would own and wear with jeans, shorts, dresses, formal wear—everything. Everywhere.
I always wondered if my tennis show friend invested in combat boots.
Regardless of the show style, I’m told my focus on footwear formulated at an early age. Mom delighted in talking about it. Told it far and wide. How the first thing I inspected was someone’s shoes. And it was a “no go” if I didn’t like them.
“We hired a babysitter one time when we lived in Ballinger,” Mom told every year at family reuninons. About a hundred times, “You looked at her shoes and started crying. Only after the poor woman removed her shoes and hid them in a closet would you consent to being in the same room with her.”
Even after Mom started losing her memory, she still managed to remember that story. Bless her heart.
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“And someone else will fill the shoes that I once wore,
Cause them shoes, don’t fit me anymore.
— Written by Hank Cochran and Velma Smith, recorded by Patsy Cline.
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When I closed the door on the “every year, whether needed or not,” spring closet cleaning ritual recently, 35 pair of shoes remained. Yeah, it scared me, too. Mostly dress and casual shoes, most of them leather. Seven pairs of cowboy boots, all leather. One pair of Bass Weejuns that cost more than I paid for my first car. One pair of tennis shoes, just for the gym.
And … from Lansky Brothers Men’s Shop in Memphis. Where Elvis shopped. The store that still markets themselves as “Clothier to the King.”
One pair of genuine blue suede shoes.
—Leon Aldridge
(Photo taken by the author in May of 2021 during the renovation of a downtown Center, Texas building that was for many years an attorney’s office. Obviously at some point before “legal” was the office buzzword, “leather” was. Removing the facade revealed signage advertising “Shoes 2 pair $5. Even thought they were real leather, it’s a safe bet they weren’t Bass Weejuns.)
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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine. © Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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