January 19, 2005
Galoshes

Winter.  I love it.  Most residents of the demographic quintile where I reside, the geezer group, seem to be unanimous in equating winter to a three-month warm weather hiatus in Arizona or California.  My train of thought chugs along the track that were the hours of winter sunshine equal in length to the hazy, lazy days of summer the snow season would be Colorado’s best time of year. 

Not that winter was always a personal favorite.  While most youngsters relish the frosty season and its snowball fights, “Flexible Flyers”, building snow forts and snowmen, the distaste for winter in my youth was palpable.  Why were the mid-western snows of decades past such a bummer?  One word. Galoshes. 

Anyone reminiscing fondly about the “good old days” obviously is ignoring galoshes, the four-buckle foot covering from hell.  In the Mid-West, home of snow today, melt tomorrow, cold gray rain, sleet filled mud puddle winters, one never went out of the house without hearing the motherly admonition “and don’t forget to wear your galoshes!” 

Galoshes.  Those odiferous (the reek of rubber overshoes remains ever pungent in my memory) boots manufactured by Servus Rubber extended up the leg past the calf and were fastened by four, finger pinching, oh so aggravating, buckles.  Not that any self-respecting 10 year old ever buckled his boots.  They always remained open and un-buckled leaving a youngster to boot flop, flop, flop his way through a Mid-Western winter.  The only people who consistently buckled their overshoes sans motherly nagging were the same dip wads who years later had their senior pictures taken wearing a suit with lapels sporting a Sunday school perfect attendance pin. 

While not wearing galoshes caused one to face life’s viscidities in soggy socks and salt marked shoes, this was a small price to pay compared with attempting to shoot hoops, ride a bike or dodge the class bully in feet encased in what felt like fifty pound lead weights. 

In Cambridge, Illinois, years before Hillary, it seemed to “take a village” for me to wear galoshes.  “Dick Maynard, do you know where to find galoshes?” said Mrs. Ingeborg Leander one February day when she spotted me splashing in school shoes through the mud puddles on Main Street.  “Of course,” I shot back, “In the New Testament between 2^nd Corinthians and Ephesians”, this being the only time I ever put Methodist Church confirmation class learning to good use.  Mrs. Leander, however, didn’t find Biblical jokes particularly humorous. Maybe that’s because she was Lutheran. 

Galoshes, I’m guessing the term is derived from the Greek word for “dork”, shouldn’t be confused with “rubbers”.  The anklebone appeared to be the dividing line separating galoshes from rubbers.  Rubbers were low cut and just covered the toe and heel of dress shoes like cordovan wing tips. Usually men in suits and ties wore rubbers.  In Cambridge this group was limited to lawyers, bankers and funeral attendees.  But on “big snow” days one found suit wearers foregoing rubbers for their “Sunday best” galoshes, featuring zippers rather than buckles.