I was up at five o’clock this morning to haul The Girl to basketball practice and had some time to kill before starting work. It was pouring rain. I saw two pairs of work boots sitting on the back porch that looked horrible. My first thought was: I hope Daddy didn’t see these yesterday. Daddy has always been one for taking care of his boots, especially his work boots. When I was a kid, even really young, he always saw to it that I had a good pair of boots every autumn, never mind that I would outgrow them in less than a year. I mean really good boots. Red Wing good. But he taught me to take care of them too. It was A Thing in our household. The roof might have leaked, there might not have been sheetrock on some of the walls, but boots were always looked after.
I never saw snow in real life until I was four. I thought it only happened on television. As soon as Daddy saw we were possibly, maybe having snow coming, out came the boot oil and rags. “It’s time to grease some boots,” he would say. We would spend twenty minutes or so rubbing mink oil into the leather, then we’d put them near the wood heater for the boot grease, as he called it, to melt in. In learning this boot greasing ritual, Daddy would tell me repeatedly just how close to put them to the fireplace. Close, but not too close.
After the oil melted into the boots until they glistened, the real work began. Using clean rags to buff the boots until the excess oil was all either rubbed in or buffed off. Then the boots looked like new, and it was time to go play in the snow.
Several decades have passed, but I still keep my boots oiled. I have my Grandpa Ern’s shoe shine box from well before I was born. And today I double checked to make sure they weren’t too close to the fireplace in case Daddy comes by.