NEW BOOTS

A shorter version of this story is in my book "A TIME AND PLACE The Making of an Immigrant." I have expanded the story and it will be published as part of an e-book in the near future.

                                             NEW BOOTS

During the summer of 1955, after I started working at a printing plant and earned a few dollars, I found myself in need of a new pair of shoes. If there were any discount stores then, I sure did not know about them. The only shoe store I knew about was downtown Metuchen.

My English was very limited then. Fortunately, the words Schuh and shoe were pronounced the same way in German as in English. I had a time trying to tell the salesman that I wanted to buy work boots. Work boots would do fine in summer and winter. I wanted to buy them bigger than my fifteen-year-old feet measured. I needed boots that would last and I would eventually grow into. This request seemed totally foreign to the man. He may have thought I was a bit dense. Several times I got the impression that he wished I had never come into his store.

At long last, after many gestures, looks, and waving of the arms, I settled for a pair of hefty, leather boots. By using his fingers on both hands he showed me, the cost of the selected boots was twenty-three dollars. I, in turn, showed off my English, also with the support of my fingers, that I only had eighteen dollars. He then motioned that he would keep them in a corner until next week when I then would pay him the balance.

I gestured and stammered back at him that I wanted to take the boots with me. The hardest thing for the sales clerk to understand was that I just offered eighteen dollars––total. All the money that I had to my name. It was all I was going to pay him. He then summarized the deal on a sales ticket. He asked where I worked, jotted that down, and now was ready for me to sign on the dotted line.

When I looked, I saw that he added the five dollars difference in the deal, listing it separately as a balance due. Well, I was not born yesterday. I pointed at the amount due and shook my head; a firm “No.” Taking his pen into my hand, I motioned for him to scratch out the five bucks due and he’d have a deal. In frustration, he raised his arms, then scribbled out the five on the bill-of-sale. I dug out my eighteen dollars and laid them on the counter.

What he muttered, I do not know. He most likely told me to take the blame shoes and get on out of his store. Not waisting any more time I was out of there, shoes firmly under my arm, and debt free.