Casual

...Working away, he told me he was from Calabria, which he loved, though he found it impossible to earn a living there...

...Well-pleated pants, a colorful necktie, a good shine, and thou, and city living is paradise enow...

...He next lit a Zippo lighter that he touched briefly to the outer sides of my shoes...

...He knew what he was doing, and did it well...

...This Calabrian was a man supplying a service...

...I climbed up into one of the seats...

...But the other day, in San Francisco and needing a shine, I passed, on Geary Street, near the city's small theater district, a small white man, with a face resembling a little that of the battling welterweight Carmen Basilio, in a blue smock seated before his three-seat shoeshine stand...

...For the world's best shoeshine, it was, the author of the article claimed, a dead-heat tie between the shines available at Grand Central Station and at the Pierre Hotel in New York...

...After shining my shoes nowadays, life seems to be a touch more promising...

...Had I been wearing a hat, I would have tipped it to him...

...As a boy, I was asked to shine my father's shoes, which, unlike other small chores I was given, I didn't in the least mind...

...The notion of having shined shoes speaks to holding up standards, even if in a very minor way...

...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...

...Five or six rounds of creams and polish were applied, each followed by buffings with either soft clothes or brushes...

...Grazie," he said...

...The shine began with his tucking the bows of my shoelaces into the tops of my shoes, so that he would not get polish on them that would rub off on my trouser cuffs...

...Shoeshine parlors were common when I was a boy, and even a young man, in Chicago...

...Several years ago, Esquire printed an article titled "The World's Second-Best Shoeshine...

...Sometimes, if I were feeling flush, I might have a shoeshine in a barbershop...

...When I dismounted from the chair, I handed him a $10 bill...

...I required that service...

...With a toothbrush he painted the outer edges of my soles...

...In the Army, shoe-shining could be nearly a full-time job...

...I decided—the hell with it—to shine my own shoes...

...Turns out it was to be had at the airport in Cleveland, where they used an ultraviolet lamp— to precisely what purpose, I cannot now recall—on one's shoes...

...I never asked him how much it cost...

...The symbolism of a black man working at the feet of a white man was too heavy for me...

...most barbershops also had a shoeshine man...

...I stopped getting shoeshines when race relations in America became so ragged and nervous-making...

...this, I've subsequently learned, is to burn off any loose threads from the leather...

...He took a last drag and prepared to toss away his cigarette, which I told him he needn't do...

...My fellow troopers, or at least the more gung-ho among them, would buy alcohol, Q-tips, and special cloths (let us not speak of the expenditure of vast quantities of spit) to achieve the highest possible sheen on their black boots and shoes...

...When I was a draftee in the peacetime Army, dedicated to a mediocrity of general performance, my own shines came out considerably lower than the highest wattage but were, somehow, passable...

...What really pleased me about my shoeshine in San Francisco was the craft that went into it, which, even though the task might be small, seemed to me of a high order...

...He had four daughters, all living in northern California, and ten grandchildren...

...While perhaps less than Prozacian in its power of uplift, something there is about a fresh shoeshine that exhilarates, or at least it does me...

...I walked off, admiring the deep brown gleam of my shoes, and pleased, not for the first time in my life, that I wasn't Gene Kelly, or I should have had to tap-dance down Geary Street all the way to Union Square, singing a lyric of doubtless astonishing banality...

...I don't recall spending much time shining my own shoes as an adolescent...

...The shine was first-class—it lasted sixteen days...

...He replied, in a strong Italian accent, "Smoking all in the head anyway...

...After he asked me my age, he told me that he was seventy-two, and had attempted to retire, but after three days at home concluded it was not for him...

...In this, the age of the gym shoe, some men may no longer own leather shoes...

...Not always but often he was black...

...I don't suppose anyone notices that my shoes are shined, but I, for some reason, notice when they are not...

...This man on Geary Street in San Francisco should have been in the running...

...We spoke as two men of the world, and I hope I report accurately when I say there was no condescension on either side...

...The phrase "a pleasure doing business with you," which I uttered when we parted, did not, for once, seem mere cant...