"You know you're old when someone compliments you on your alligator shoes, and you're barefoot."
---Phyllis Diller
Upon learning that my better half and I were bound for Barcelona this past spring, my neighbor Ann who had just returned from a six-week sojourn in the Mediterranean gave me directions to an amazing atelier chockablock with shoes - ballerinas, no less. My good friend had six pairs shipped home. Accordingly, I asked the driver to take me there posthaste, straight from the airport; the hotel could wait. Rodney went along because Ann's husband Bill had offered him some sage advice. If you have a choice between shopping in Barcelona or Paris, choose Barcelona every time.
And speaking of time, shoes have a way of marking its passage. I find that it is slipping away. This, in the last year with a milestone birthday, has become the headliner here at home. I was recently reminded when I ambled through the door of a shoe store where I've been shopping for eons. This particular Saturday, the young sales girl (everyone appears an adolescent these days, like Doogie Howser in the white coat) offered to assist the moment I appeared. Answering in the affirmative: "Yes, I'm looking for some shoes." Her retort, "Want to see some SAS?"
For a bit of background - one would have to know me, my mother, and shoes - to understand how flummoxed I was. My mother lived eighty-six years, leaving the world with a stack of red boxes of Ferragamos, lining the shelves of her closet. They came in colors of black, platinum, and chocolate brown, adorned with a bow smack dab on top. A size eight, double narrow, Momma loved shoes. Sneaking into her closet when I was a kid, I didn't see all that many practical shoes. Her row of Keds, in primary colors, were the exception. Coming of age in the 1940s, an elegant era, Momma was drawn to slingbacks and wedges and pumps, particularly peep-toe.
But my husband Rodney's beloved grandmother Sadie Sylvest Bateman loved SAS shoes. In fact, I believe they may have been all she wore.
Maw-Maw, as I fondly called my grandmother-in-law, told me all about them, back in the eighties when she was in her eighties. In my twenties, I didn't much value the attributes of SAS, but I valued Maw-Maw, paying attention and tucking away the important information she imparted for the future.
And the future is now. A seven and a half medium, I -- walking, traveling, and playing --- appreciate comfort. Doing some serious research, I discovered that each pair of SAS is made by hand in Texas, where San Antonio Shoemakers was founded by Terry Armstrong and Lew Hayden in 1976. They may not be easy on the pocketbook, but they are exceptionally comfortable, which brings me back to the situation in the shoe store.
I was aghast when the young sales clerk, still wet behind the ears, offered me SAS from the get-go. What, no choices? How did this happen? More importantly, when did it happen? And then, it hit me like a brick. I am over the landmark age of sixty which apparently is at the tail end of middle-age. While follow-up research revealed that sixty-five is actually the formal cut-off, to that young lady I might as well have been a hundred. Remember being twenty and thinking forty was over the hill? Said sales girl figured, at just one glance, that I was ready for the grave.
The bewildering part is not that she got my dandruff up with her suggestion. It is that I replied, "Yes, please."
And with that, we embarked on a long journey from the front of the store to the back of the building where the SAS shoes are housed. I have a gut feeling they don't want the young women to see them. They display the stylish shoes - more on that in a minute - toward the front of the facility. But from a practical standpoint, the location selected for SAS seems sort of counterintuitive to me. A considerable passage for a generation largely less able to go the distance. It is kind of illogical. In my mind, the SAS shoes should be front and center. But they are not. While I did not get worked up into a lather, it bears noting that the brand is so far back in the store that one needs a guide to get there. And in the process, the customer passes the heels and the platforms and the boots. It wasn't all that many years ago that I could wear a three-inch heel. They rest on a shelf in my closet, just in case I lose twenty pounds or twenty years.
Back to the store, I was marched past all those stylish options. I even caught sight of a pair that reminded me of the kind of shoes that Betsy's school principal once fell from --- seriously, she did --- and broke a bone. I guess she didn't get the memo about SAS or have a Maw Maw-in-law who recommended them. Fortunately, I did. And so, here I am at sixty with two new pairs of SAS shoes; I dropped a pretty penny on a comfy pair of black leather clogs and some shiny gold sandals which will take me into summer. I couldn't be happier. Comfort is king.
Historically, one of my favorite tunes was Joe South's "Walk A Mile in My Shoes." It was made even more famous by Elvis Presley. While I do love the snazzy ballerinas, in the color red, that I bought in Barcelona, the shoes I plan to walk a mile in will be SAS.
