Many years ago, after my pair of steel toe Corcoran Field Boot II had become so worn as to be unwearable, i tried to buy a new pair. Looked in catalogs, no luck. Looked online, no luck. Called the company, no luck. Called various retailers - please! check you stock again! - no luck. They had the boots, but not in steel toe. The company confirmed that they stopped making them in steel toe.
Enter Rick Barter, a person i know only through online e-mails - through posts to the OpenBSD misc@ mailing list - and who sends mail through Kentucky.
Happens to be looking at my website,
at this page, which has some zany personal notes on boots.
Happens to note the boot links on that page are broken.
Happens to e-mail me a note about that.
Happens to be that i pay attention.
Happens to be that while i'm looking up the new links for those products, i find that those field boots again come i steel toe.
My favourite boot is now on its way to me.
It's more than a fascination, it's more than a novel expression, it's more than a wannabe desire, it's definitely more than a fashion statement. It's a story; it's my story, complete with all the melodrama that entails.
I spent the first few years of my life in Somalia. Yeah,
that Somalia. My mother was pretty green at the time; Peru was one thing, but for a young white US country girl, Somalia was just otherworldly. And though it's a testament to her stength that she eventually adjusted so well, at the time there were many things that she took very seriously, like
always wearing at least slippers outside,
always cleaning your hands,
always watching what you eat, etc, etc.
Back to that slippers bit. When i was 25 i couldn't remember my feet ever touching grass. But i could remember wearing boots at the beach. I also realised a certain paranoia of land mines that i gained in El Salvador. I also started to
really realise that i was living in the U.S.A., and everything that meant (e.g. - hey! if you walk through any random forest, you do not risk stepping on mines!). And i started to realise that i wore boots all the time - during winter and summer, to weddings, while biking, running, etc - i always had my feet covered, just like my momma taught me so long ago.
I've branched off from boots since then, though they are still my mainstay footwear. I've walked barefoot through the arb, through downtown, even at home. I wear sandals and other Lesser Footwear.
But more importantly, i recognize boots as symbolic of a piece of me - an indicator of part of my history, of part of what's made me who i am, of what's given me my skills. To see my favourite boot back in my favourite form; i am reunited with a very, very old friend.
Labels: family, history
