so i had my shoes shined yesterday

at a clothing store in town. i've been going in there for years and seen the old dude at the shine stand just sitting there, never exactly swamped with business.

i'm a little freaky-obsessive about keeping my shoes shined, and the loafers i had on were pretty bad. so i pop up in the chair and figure maybe i can watch the old guy show me his craft.

24 minutes later, i'm staring at America's worst shine. the poor guy was undoing bottles of shoe products from the 50s. then he hauls out a Craftsman heater and covers my shoes. To finish the job, he lifts one of those floor model buffer thing-ys and buffs my shoes.

the best part is that when he didn't put the protective card blockers in to protect the socks from getting shoe gunk on them, i thought to myself," the man is obviously old school. he'd be insulted if i asked about those."