BACK TO SCHOOL

      

Back in the "old days" when I was a kid, one of the best parts of heading back to school was the shopping for new shoes.  In those days, at our house, you had three pairs of shoes if you were lucky!  There were your School Shoes, your Play Shoes (usually they were your old school shoes), and your Dress-Up/Sunday School shoes.  After school I had to take off my school shoes and put on my play shoes.  On Sundays I strapped on my patent leather Mary Janes.

As a kid there was not much choice as to where we could get new shoes...it was Stride Rite.  At the end of August my brother and I would look forward to going downtown and visiting Seidel's Stride Rite - the highlight being able to put our feet into the xray machine and see our tarsels and metatarsels through the little viewer.  The amazement! Then the salesman would have us stand on the little foot-shaped measurer and slide the guides til he knew what size we were.  "Amazing!", my Mom and Dad would always say. "Their feet are sooo much bigger than last time!".  After hearing that for 14 years in a row I began to feel like I would eventually have the feet of a Platypus. It was that special smell of those new shoes, nestled in their box with tissue paper I remember.  Right before Easter we would all return for spring shoes...in my case those wonderful black patent leather Mary Janes with the slick soles on which you could carpet-skate!

As my brother and I got older there was more merchant competition so we drifted away from Stride Rite.  As teenagers we had more sophisticated tastes!  One year for Christmas my brother begged for Thom McCan Flagg Fliers. These babies didnt have laces - but came with a tongue-like device that snapped down and locked you into your shoes.  I, as a frustrated cheerleader wanna-be, yearned for the classic red-rubber-soled black and white saddle shoes to be worn with thick wool socks and crinolined skirts.  When I opened the box at Christmas inside was a pair of "pseudo cheerleader" shoes. I thanked Mr. and Mrs. Claus but I was sooo disappointed. 

Getting back to school clothes was not as much fun as a young kid.  My Mom bought all my clothes and brought them home. Later she went with me so the trip was frought with stress. (She was Tailored and I was Ruffles). The #1 Shopping Trip of all Times was when I was in high school and our family drove to Allentown about a half hour from home where a new store called Hess Brothers had opened. They had a restaurant so we had dinner first.  My parents enjoyed a DRINK with their dinner and were in such a magnanimous and jovial mood that my brother and I made out like banditos!

New shoes, new clothes and last but not least...the new pencil case, complete with pencils, pencil sharpener, protractor (never used in school) and a new box of crayons from nearby Binney & Smith...and off we went!  The memories I have of grade school include wonderful smells...cheap ruled paper, school paste, smells of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking from the school cafeteria, wet mittens drying on the radiators...it's all coming back to me now!  And the stories I could tell you about Miss Schleicker!!!!  One story features a closet, tape and a kid named Bobby!