An old coot explains the Boot Generation.
by Merlin Lessler (AKA the Old Coot)
I was thinking about boots today. It started when I glanced
out the kitchen window at a group of high school kids waiting for the bus, on
this, a snowy winter morning. It’s the fourth or fifth set of kids I’ve watched
grow up at the bus stop. Today, they wore several different forms of winter
wear, at teenager’s version anyhow: spring coats, sweatshirts, T-shirts,
sneakers, flip flops and the like. Only two wore winter coats. No one was
wearing winter footwear. Nothing close to the buckle boots I trudged off to
school in on snowy mornings. That’s when it hit me, my generation is misnamed.
We’re not the Silent Generation, especially those of us born at the very end of
the period when the world was at war and just before the Baby Boomers started
emerging. We’re the Boot Generation.
We started off, in
“booties,” graduated to baby shoes, that weren’t shoes at all, more like boots
since they came above our ankles. Then came cowboy boots. We had to have them,
having cut our hero worship teeth on the likes of Roy & Dale, Hopalong
Cassidy, Gene Autry and The Lone Ranger. Mine came from a boot and saddle shop
on a street now buried under the Broome County Arena. It was my favorite store.
The owner let us sit on the display saddles that were propped up on sawhorses.
It was almost as good as the pony rides we waited in line for when the carnival
or circus came to town.
Next came high-cuts,
military looking leather boots that rose half way to our knees and had a pouch
on the side for a jack knife. The world we lived in was awash in WWII surplus
military goods and the high cuts were a fashion necessity for kids in my south
side neighborhood. We spent much of our time hiking in those high-cuts through
the woods on South Mountain. An Army or Navy knapsack was on our back and a
canvas wrapped, metal canteen hung from our belt. Some kids wore low-cuts; they
were a buck or two cheaper at the regular shoe store, but we opted for high
cuts and bought them at the EJ outlet. Even cheaper yet. (The store is also
buried near the Arena, only a little closer to the river)
Buckle boots
(overshoes that adults called galoshes) got us back and forth on our journey to
and from school on snowy days, though it took a lot of effort to jam our shoes
into them. Next, came ski boots (and Army surplus skis) from the downtown
Salvation Army store. The store was loaded with donated items, including a huge
section of military surplus goodies, at deeply discounted prices. (Yet another
buried memory, this time, a little north of the Collier Street Bridge, which
started out as the State Street bridge when it was built in the mid 1950’s.
Buried Binghamton was a pretty cool place before the urban renewal swept it
away.) Anyway, when we put on those boots and skis (with a bear trap clamp
system, guaranteed to break your ankle if you fell, and trudged to the top of
the hills above our neighborhood, we pretended we were in the Alps, tackling
the steepest slopes in Europe.
Then came the “COOL
YEARS,” teenage days in the 1950’s. The boots were desert boots, a late
arriving competitor to the white bucks and dirty bucks that were all the rage.
Especially when paired with an oxford cloth, button down collar shirt and a
pair of pegged, black flannel pants, the legs so narrow at the ankle they were
a challenge to get on. Lastly, at the end of that growing up phase of our
lives, which seems like just a few years ago, came shinny black leather, pointy
toe boots that we saw teenage hoods wear in movies like Blackboard Jungle and
Rebel Without a Cause.
Booties, baby boots,
cowboy boots, high cuts, buckle boots, ski boots, desert boots, and hood boots.
What else could you call my generation but the Boot Generation.
