This shoe shine box was my "office" as I made my first foray into entrepreneurship. Our dad had built it in high school shop class many years earlier. My brother and I guess it to be about 90 years old now.
Throughout his life dad always maintained a high gloss on his 'dress shoes'. He often admonished his sons that regardless of how well- dressed someone might be, if the shoes were scuffed and dirty, well... they just were not actually well-dressed. As I write this, I touch memories of Saturday night shoe shines as we prepared for next day's church attendance. My almost 68 year old 'baby brother' maintains that he used it when shining his older brothers' shoes for their high school dates.
Back to the entrepreneur-ing. Around the age of ten or eleven, wanting to earn additional money, I applied for the job of shoe shiner at Mr. Lewter's barbershop. (In our area at that time, barbershops had a virtual monopoly as the place to receive such service.) Mr. Lewter told me that Charles G. currently had the job but had not been there for several weeks. (The 'work week' was Friday afternoon after school and all day on Saturdays.) Then he added that if Charles did not come in 'tomorrow' ...Saturday... , I could have the job. I asked if I could stay and shine shoes that day for any customers that might want that. 'Yes'. Well, I had a few customers. Charles apparently learned of all that and came to the shop the following morning. Whereupon, I took the above box, well stocked with tools of the trade, and set up my business across the street in front of the dry cleaning plant owned by dad and my uncle. Unlike Charles's experience that day, my business 'boomed' and by the end of the day, he 'resigned'. The following week, I was in my new 'office' and remained there until I was hired to work in the new 'supermarket' that came to town.
Unlike the Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy (of the song by that title) who "charges you a nickel just to shine one shoe", I remember my fee being 25 cents. Mr. Lewter provided the space free, so on a given week-end I could earn a respectable income. I suppose his rationale --beyond his kindness to an enterprising kid -- was that having a shoe shiner in his shop was also 'good for business'. It has been a long time since I had a professional shoe shine and have no idea the current cost but likely it is in the range of what an inexpensive pair of shoes might have cost in the late 1940's.
When Mr. Lewter moved his shop to a more spacious locale, I also had a larger 'office'. Only once did I have an unpleasant customer experience. On a rainy Saturday, Charlie Gray, a local 'jack-leg preacher' (according to the Oxford English Dictionary:
"incompetent, unskilled, unscrupulous, dishonest. Frequently used of lawyers and preachers.") asked that I shine his shoes. When I had finished, this physically large man said, "Son, it's raining outside. You don't want to charge me a quarter, do you?" He gave me 15 cents. I felt intimidated, by his being an 'adult' and by his size. Today, we might call this behavior 'bullying'. I prefer 'grandiose'. This same man said to dad, the dry cleaner, that since he (Charlie) was a minister, dad ought to give him a reduced rate for cleaning his clothing. Whereupon dad ended that claim of specialness by informing Charlie that it cost dad as much to clean his clothes as it did anyone else's.
A few years later, when our family moved to a new town and dad began his career with Metropolitan Insurance Company, my brother launched his own 'business career' shining shoes in our uncle's shop in the nearby mill town. He claims little remembrance of that time other than the shop's lack of indoor plumbing, necessitating considerable resourcefulness in seeking alternatives.
The Chattanooga Shoe Shine Artist allegedly could also 'make the oldest kind o' leather look like new' through his virtuosity in snapping the cloth. I never reached that level of artistry but I developed sufficient skills so that when I was a lowly army private, I could put an impressive 'spit shine' on my boots. Only rarely, when in a rush, did I fall back on the prevailing trick of using a commercial brand deodorant pad that could produce a shine wherein you could see your face well enough to shave . . . provided no water hit them and the sergeant was in sufficient hurry not to look too closely.
Wow ! If I had known that trick years earlier, I could have given Charlie his 'money's worth'.
Satchel
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