bas couture

A college friend of mine used to say "there is no irony in real life." Wrong! I just had a pair of Birkenstock sandals resoled by an Italian cobbler. It cost thirty dollars. He gave them back to me in a clear plastic bag. I figure that there's got to be enough incongruities here for at least one essay.

First I should explain a little about my history with Birkenstocks. According to Wikipedia they were first sold in the U.S. of A. in 1966 and quickly became to the counter-culture and liberalism what Manolo Blahnik is to the ladies of "Sex in the City".

Somewhat boastfully the Federal Republic of German's Cultural Institute tells us "'Many visitors to Woodstock wore our sandals,' states the manufacturer Birkenstock. This orthopaedic shoe, or 'Birkenstock sandal', experienced an astronomical rise in popularity thanks to hippies and proponents of the alternative lifestyle. It finally became a fashion item with the '68 protest generation who declared this dedicated health shoe to be a prime example of 'anti-fashion', a perfect accessory with which to express their socially critical opinions."

Even though I graduated from college right the middle of the sixties, and agreed from a distance with most of those "socially critical opinions" (or at least the non-chemically enhanced ones) I knew nothing about the appropriate footwear to foster those beliefs. Instead I did the best that I could with sneakers and loafers - occasionally radicalizing my appearance by going sockless. I also missed Woodstock, Mars being seven months pregnant, and me having just begun work at the local insurance company from which I retired thirty-six years later. Actually I probably wouldn't have gone anyway.

I did however discover "Birks" in one of the hotbeds of sixties radicalism, San Francisco, albeit while on vacation with Mars and our son in 1983. We were in a store that I remember as more fancy-schmantzy than hippy-dippy when I saw them and, to my surprise, impulsively tried on and purchased a pair. The clerk emphasized the orthopedic and comfort qualities of the sandal rather than the social cache that went along with them - an indication of either my apparent conservative demeanor or, more likely, a sea change in the world of pedi-culture. They were comfortable immediately. And I wore them basically nonstop for the rest of our trip. And likewise since then, summer, fall, winter and spring, except for situations that required dress shoes, athletic shoes, or mukluks - without learning of their lineage for several years.

I read somewhere that rather than replace a worn-out pair all I had to do was remove the old sole myself and "simply" glue on a new one. This story of self-redemption appealed to me and was in keeping with the sandal's history of which I was then aware. I even bought a pair of soles to use for the event, although I can't remember where.

When the time came to perform the act I decided that (a) I had no idea how to remove the old shoe bottom and (b) even less of a concept of how to attach a new one. I went to several cobblers in the area, shoes in one hand and soles in the other, seeking absolution from my soulful situation. But each patent leather Pharisee cast me out, disdainfully saying they did not work on "those shoes."

Ultimately I did find a shoemaker who repaired and also sold them - along with other brands of "Earth Shoe" like products. He even wore Birkenstocks. I did business with him for many years and then one day, as happens frequently with the older trades, he was just no longer there. Although I realized that there were several mail order repair services I went back to discarding and replacing. Without the aromatic haze of leather and shoe polish in the air it just didn't seem right to outsource the repair job.

Then recently I heard of another relatively local cobbler who would repair Birkenstocks. Like my former fixer he was Italian with enough family pictures on the wall and cordovan stains on his hands to indicate the many years he had been at his trade. He also sold shoes - faux Ferragamo and lots of the gray or white walking shoes that frequently adorn senior women's shuffling feet.

"Can you put new soles on these?" I asked.

"Yeah." He growled begrudgingly, with no eye contact. "Tuesday if I gotta order 'um. Saturday if I gottum." He walked away and returned almost immediatly.

"Saturday. Thirty five dollars."

I wasn't able to pick them up until Wednesday. When I gave him the ticket he started rummaging through his pile of completed work.

"They're Birkenstocks." I said.

"Oh yeah. Them." He found the shoes. "Give me thirty dollars. Go spend the rest on gas."

They were wrapped almost hermetically in a thick, sturdy plastic. I am wearing them as I write this and they look to me like they've been shined, so I'm thinking that the polyethylene was intended to protect the polish.

That is why these countercultural movements never fully succeed. In the end they have to depend upon some small part of the mainstream societal infrastructure to take care of them. And these traditionalists only know how to do their job the way they have always done it. Until one day when they are just not there any longer.

Border Patrol

I noticed the other day that I can actually tell where our property ends and our neighbor's begins. I think that is a good thing - every piece of private property should have its own identity (or what's the point of it being private). And every border should be natural, even the manmade ones.

As I think back over the past twenty-eight years I can remember other instances when this was true. With one or two exceptions everyone in this neighborhood mows their own lawns - and has for as long as we've been here. That's important to me. I remember visiting an aunt of mine in suburban Long Island where one and only one landscaping service essentially mowed the entire street, interrupted only by the need to go around the metal or plastic fences that demarked each otherwise identical Eden. Everything looked very nice but to me it somehow just seemed wrong.

My former next-door neighbor John used what he said was "the cheapest" power mower he could find. He replaced them basically every year, and each and every one of them left, for whatever reason, deep, well-defined tire tracks in the new-mown grass. John trimmed his lawn with geometric efficiency and the end result of his efforts was a series of concentric squares stretching from border to border - as obvious as some of the patterns that today are deliberately cut into the outfields at baseball stadiums. He loved cutting the grass, and watered and mowed it frequently, so at least half of the time his fescue reflected the latest impressions of his latest effort.

At that time, as I do today, I used either a power mower or a reel-type push mower - depending on the length of the grass, my level of energy, and the part of the yard (some of the vegetation collapses limply in front of the spinning reel and then pops back up mockingly just in time to be seen on the return trip). My power mowers always have a mulching attachment that, with varying degrees of success, "puts the grass clippings back into the ground" - giving me a least a little ecological cover for polluting the air that I, and others, are inhaling.

The push mower leaves absolutely no evidence of where it has been other than an occasional tuft of belligerently uncut grass, a beheaded dandelion stalk or two, and the thin carpet of detached grass blades that shoot up from the rotating blades, briefly hover, and then float down to the ground. Since I don't rake them I assume eventually they must work their way into the earth - where else would they have to go? - but apparently not as rapidly or efficiently as the power-mulched ones do. At least according to the folks at the Toro Power Equipment Company.

The gas mower leaves tracks, but not anywhere as prominent as those of my former neighbor. This might be partially due to the fact that my cutting paths are more random than geometric and therefore more difficult to discern. Fortunately, at least for tracking purposes, the mulching attachment is less than one hundred percent effective and some of the clippings, rather than being sliced and diced, are instead clumped and dumped at various spots along my cutting route. This is especially true in areas where the grass is taller.

As I understand it the mulching attachment works by bouncing the blades of grass back into the blades of the mower for repeated smaller and smaller chopping - sort of like Cirque Du Soleil in a blender. In order to achieve peak efficiency I probably need to mow while the grass is short enough to allow room for each individual leaf to fall freely, rather than bumping into each other and bundling together - Cirque Du Soleil with some of the acrobats wearing Velcro. I.e. every two or three days. But then I wouldn't need the machine power to push through the waves of grain. I could use my hand-push reel mower and not pollute the skies. But then the grass won't compost, at least not right away.

But there is more to retirement than cutting grass. There is writing about thinking about cutting grass for example.

Anyway the point is that whenever John and I cut our respective lawns at the same time the borderline between our respective properties was readily apparent. Two or so days later that distinction was totally gone. We both had the same genus and species of grass - Kentucky Blue Rooted Tongue Bladed Fescue or something like that. Anyway it was green most of the Spring, Summer and Fall. And stuff grew in it - like dandelions, crabgrass, ground ivy and an unidentified-at-the-time pink-purple weed that popped up in bunches pretty much anywhere it wanted. Having other things to do we both were less than one hundred percent devoted to eliminating them. So, while these uninvited suburban guests didn't exactly flourish on each of our lawns - they were nonetheless a presence on both sides of the border.



Then a few years ago Mars and I began using an organic lawn care company. And John sold his house to Ralph, a thirty-something college professor trying for tenure who shortly thereafter married, and then had a child - not someone likely to be a lawn fanatic. While our yard headed slowly towards weed-independence the one next door drifted somewhat in the opposite direction. (In general there are now three classes of yards on our street: zero dandelions (ChemLawn), a handful of dandelions (Organicare), herds of dandelions (no lawn care).)

A couple of days ago I happened to be walking the property line and noticed thick, pristine, green grass to my left and a blanket of pink-purple to my right. The next day Ralph asked me if I knew what the pale red weeds were. I didn't, but later that week my organic lawn care guys were working across the street at another neighbor, so I wandered over and asked them.

"Henbit." He said after picking off a piece and staring closely at it. Then he walked along the edge of my property with a concerned look on his face and said, "We'll have to keep an eye on that this year to protect your property."

At first I thought he might have been some kind of landscaping Minuteman fanatic, trying to force his own view horticultural uniformity on a less-than-willing population. But on further thought I decided he was just doing his job of providing a little "Lawn Order" on the border - kind of like Sam Waterson in rubber boots and a white polo shirt.

I told him "I'd appreciate it."

"DUN dun"

All My Life's A Circle

Something or someone is eating the tires on my Weber Barbeque Grill. We know who the culprit is - well not specifically "who", but we are certain of the species that is partaking of this polyethylene. And unless Attorney Barry Scheck and "The Innocence Project" show up on our doorstep with irrefutable DNA results to the contrary we are going to hold them accountable to the full extent of the law - whatever that means when you're talking about squirrels.

It is pretty much an open and shut case - a "slam dunk" to use a recently discredited sports cliche.

(1) We just do not have anywhere on our property, on a full or part time basis, anyone else with either the denticles (means) or the desire (motive) to decimate and digest these disks.



(2) Mars and I have both observed the subjects of interest devouring similarly constituted "foods" (modus operandi/criminal history). In particular they seem addicted to soda bottle plastic (we use the containers as "bird" feeders), same genus, different species than the synthetic material in the wheels. They then devour the pieces of duct tape that we use to repair the aforementioned openings.

(3) It just gets worse. This morning I drove off in our Jeep Cherokee. It sputtered and jerked for a block or two before it seemed to "blow itself out". When I looked under the hood I found a pile of chewed up acorns sitting in the depression on top of the engine block. Ironically this morning's paper had a question in the Auto Advice column about keeping squirrels out from under the hood. Apparently there are electric devices that deter them. Moth balls work also - although unless you have a really strong slingshot it is difficult to imagine how they would.



It looks to me as if the little terrorists have crossed the line from harmless vandalism to premeditated acts of mayhem. And we need to react accordingly. I plan to push the legal system for the maximum punishment available - "The Hot Seat", "Old Sparky", "Gruesome Gurtie", "Yellow Mama".

Only one problem though - none of them are working. It seems that something or someone is eating the wires.

Fighting Fashionistas

One of the persistent myths about the Battle of Gettysburg is that Robert E. Lee came to that town in search of shoes for his ill shod or barefooted soldiers. This story is based upon the false premise that Gettysburg was, at that time, a prominent producer of footwear. It was not.

What is true however is that a goodly number, if not the majority, of Lee's army was significantly sartorially challenged.

According the website civilwarsoldier.com "It was not uncommon for the uniforms to be ill-fitting, with sleeves either too short or too long, and to have buttons missing.....Those lucky enough to have a fitting pair of shoes would often nail horseshoes to them to prevent the soles from wearing down." Soldiers garnered clothing wherever they could. Occasionally Rebel soldiers were seen wearing women's hats into battle in order to provide them protection from the sun and heat.

Additionally, and possibly explaining the millinery preferences of at least some of the Southerners, was the fact that ".....their ranks also included women (posing as men)." (op. cit.)

While the morale of these soldiers remained high due to their victories in battle, General Lee realized the extreme importance of physical comfort to his troops in maintaining that enthusiasm and confidence. He also was aware of the increasing prevalence of flowered bonnets on the battlefield, particularly among the more heavily hirsute, and the increasing grumbling in the ranks about the overall drabness of their ensembles.

He gathered his next-in-commands in council and posed the issue to them. The room was filled with cigar smoke - and total silence.

"Come now gentlemen. Surely at least one of you must have some thoughts on the subject. How about you Jeb?" Lee said, looking at General James Ewell Brown Stuart - as a cavalryman one of his most dashing and fashion-savvy officers.

"I'm a-sorry." replied the horse-soldier, who had a slight speech impediment that caused him to insert the letter "a" inappropriately into words. "I am-a drawing a complete blanak."

"Of course" said Lee. "And how droll of you to self-effacingly disguise your brilliant idea in a pun. Gentlemen. Tomorrow we march to Lancaster Pennsylvania to take advantage of their annual sidewalk sale of high fashion shoes.



It was on his way to this shopping spree that Lee's troops happened upon the Union Army at Gettysburg. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So we will never know:

(a) what would the shoes cost in Confederate dollars?

(b) How would the Union troops have reacted to Pickett's Sashay?









Please check out the following links for other observations on the world of haute couture footware in our travels to Florence Italy (part 1, part 2 & part 3) & Quebec City, Canada.

...And Leave The Driving To Us

Soldiers weren't the only ones to descend on the small town of Gettysburg during the first days of July in 1863. Nor were they the only ones to linger in that town after the battle was over.

As they did throughout the entire war, groups of friends and relatives, along with others who did not personally know the warriors, followed them from place to place. Even during this deadliest conflict in our nation's history there were tourists visiting the arenas of war soon after the smoke and dust had settled - often before the dead and wounded were removed from the scene. During our recent on-site Elderhostel in Gettysburg we learned that visitors actually picnicked on the site of that battle while wounded soldiers lay nearby calling out for food and water - not that dissimilar from our willingness to watch television's saturation coverage of, for example, the recent Virginia Tech shootings.

On a lighter note it is popularly believed that the origin of the word "hooker" comes the female camp followers of the charismatic Civil War General "Fighting Joe" Hooker. While it seems to be true that the commander did have such an erotic entourage trailing him throughout the conflict, etymologically speaking the term was already being used to refer to prostitutes as early as 1835.

It is undoubtedly true that the majority of these caravans of supporters traveled via the same means of transportation as the soldiers - by foot and/or horse. However this recently discovered albumen print by Civil War photographer Matthew Brady shows that at least one high ranking officer was able to provide much better accommodations for his band of groupies.