took care of new clothes. There were no malls

took care of new clothes.

There were no malls then and my mother didn’t drive. If we were feeling very adventurous we would take the Number 12 bus to downtown Portland, have lunch, and buy a new dress usually red plaid and perhaps a new sweater usually navy blue.

But for shoes, my mother and I would walk down Wisteria Avenue and into the Hollywood District where the movie theater and several department stores were located.

My mother’s favorite was Miller’s. I remember its creaky wooden floors and fussy sales clerks but, in one comer of the store, was the shoe department and it was there that we would look at Buster Brown shoes.

For my mother, these were the shoes that she knew and trusted. They were made of leather and you could polish them over and over and always get a shine. The suited shoe-man would have me stand on this thing that resembled a scale, but I think it was an x-ray machine as he would always say, “They fit perfectly and she has room to grow.”

Year after year, I would start the new school year with black and white saddle shoes or cream and brown saddle shoes or burgundy loafers. One year it was black MaryJanes. But they were always Buster Browns.

Inside the shoe where your heel goes, was a round decal bearing the image of the little Dutch boy with his dog. There was always a little toy in the shoe box and when I was really young, the shoe man wouldn’t let me leave without a helium balloon bearing Buster’s image.

I looked forward to our trips together to shop for school, the smell of her cologne, the brush of her coat against my cheek and walking out of Miller’s with a brand new pair of Buster Browns.

My pencils sharpened, my books meticulously covered and my fountain pen not leaking, I was ready to walk down the hallways and find a new classroom each year.

I felt sorry for Stephen as he never mastered the fountain pen routine. He did, eventually, loose his taste for ink but then couldn’t keep away from that pasty white glue.