Labor Day

It’s been a long weekend here, with the Labor Day holiday, and temperatures still in the upper 90’s. Since Tim’s wedding is coming up, and I don’t plan to wear my morning suit for the evening’s celebrations, I thought the very least I could do is turn out in a clean pair of boots. So on Saturday I went to Leddy’s in Sundance Square in Fort Worth to have them professionally polished. Shoe-shine, as far as I’m aware, has disappeared in the UK, but is still alive in certain areas of the US. A good pair of boots costs enough that you’d want to keep them clean and in good repair.

Leddy's

Leddy’s is one of the oldest stores in Fort Worth, dating back to 1929. They specialize in Western apparel, and were the first store to offer “re-manufactured weather” – now, we call it “air-conditioning”. I sat, as you can see, in the window, and Todd commented on the attire (due to the heat) of the young ladies passing by – he added, flashing his ring-finger, that he “still had the appetite, but had to eat at home”. The boot I’m holding, by the way, is worth $3125, which is half of the $6250 that the pair would cost. These are hand-made Lucchese alligator boots – way out of my league, but he insisted I hold it up for the photograph. Lucchese are based in Fort Worth, and, if you want a pair of made-to-measure boots, you’ll have to wait about 9 months! These days, we’ve lost the idea that it’s worth paying more for something you can repair, because it’s cheaper to buy new, and discard the old.

After Leddy’s, I went to Starbucks for an “Iced tazo lemonade tea” – I don’t know what it is either, but it was refreshing.

Today, I headed for Wichita Falls, just because I haven’t been there before. By happenstance, I turned off the highway at Bowie, and found the older Rte 81 – still headed in the same direction (the old Chisholm Trail), but much less traveled. In Bowie, Krispy Chicken manages to survive against Sonic and McDonalds; and the Budget Motel against its newer rivals. But I don’t know for how long – like every other small town, its heart is being slowly ripped out. When I see buildings, especially businesses, falling prey to dereliction, I can’t help thinking that they were once new; that their gaudy signs once proclaimed a new era; that their owners once stood proudly outside. Slowly, those hopes and dreams have leached back into the earth from which they sprang. The way of all things, I suppose.

Driving up Rte 81 was liberating, in a way I can’t describe. It’s not surprising, if you’ve ever thought about it, that highways follow railroads – any divergence tends to be for one of two reasons: highways go up and over hills, while railroads try to go through or around them. So the highways are long and straight, through featureless, but not empty, landscapes. It feels different here, but I don’t know why – the “open road”, and all that the phrase embodies. So I drove, almost imperceptibly crossing the state line into Oklahoma, and back into Texas – through Byers, Waurika, Petrolia, Jolly and Henrietta.

The small towns each have their murals – it seems a point of pride. Many are nothing more than a church, a bank and a diner (not necessarily in that order), but a local artist will have adorned one, or more, of the buildings with a painting identifying their association with the Chisholm Trail, and with the “new frontier”.

Mural in Byers

Mural in Petrolia

I shouldn’t really dodge commenting on Katrina and New Orleans, but there isn’t much I can say that hasn’t been said already. A colleague at work made the (I think) original comment that “the fabric of society is soluble in water”. Eloquent, and sadly true.