Tag: Life Magazine

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The Bootery

2015-09-18 120 N Main St_1186I’ve probably been in Broussard’s a dozen or so times when a Cajun craving hit, but I never noticed “The Bootery” set into the entrance before this visit.

If you click the photo to make it larger, you can see my reflection in the glass. It was a warm day, so I didn’t commit the terrible fashion faux pas of wearing socks with my sandals.

Search came up empty

Fluroscope at The National Museum of Nuclear ScienceA search of The Missourian archive for “Bootery” turned up empty. I turned to Google next. It took me to a 1959 Life Magazine ad for Roblee shoes. The word “bootery” was used by a lot of shoe stores, but the only listing for Cape was C.S. Gaylor.

Gaylor’s was where we usually went to buy shoes. I was always disappointed that Mother wouldn’t let me play with the neat fluoroscope that let you see your toes inside your shoes (while delivering a mass of x-ray radiation to your gonads). You can read more about the machine here.

What was at 120 Main?

1938-08-15 Missourian AdMy next trick was to search for the store’s address, 120 North Main street. Still pretty much dry except for a 1938 ad for The Smart Shop. The building next door at 118 North Main was being vacated by Vogelsanger Hardware Company.

The Smart Shop was showing furs from St. Louis, but you could buy a quality rayon Giana crepe for $6.50 at Hecht’s. (I don’t know whether you’re supposed to eat, hang or wear a crepe, so you’ll have to tell me if that’s a good deal.)

Follow Santa’s Trail

12-06-1939 Missourian contest adThe Smart Shop was mentioned in this Christmas contest ad in the December 6, 1939, Missourian. It’s fascinating to see how many businesses were still around 30 years later. You’re definitely going to have to click this one to make it larger to read the names.

Bootery mystery

2015-09-18 120 N Main St_1179Someone else is going to have to fill me in on the background of The Bootery. I couldn’t come up with any information about it.

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Seeing the Elephant

West Palm Beach National Guard unit at Camp Blanding summer campIt was the summer of 1975. Saigon had fallen and the Vietnam War was over. My draft lottery was high enough that I wasn’t called, even though my draft status was 1A for a brief time in 1969.

I talked The Post into sending me to Camp Blanding with a local National Guard unit for a week of summer camp. I wrote about the experience in 2012. On this Memorial Day weekend, my thoughts turn back to that era.

National Guard was a safe haven

West Palm Beach National Guard unit at Camp Blanding summer campThe unit was a mixture of young guys with long hair who wore wigs over their tresses serving alongside men with gray in their hair. One guardsman wore jump wings on his cap and sported tattoos on his arms listing almost every major battle in the Pacific during World War II.

Seeing the elephant

West Palm Beach National Guard unit at Camp Blanding summer campThe phrase “seeing the elephant” popped up in many Civil War letters and diaries, but Curator Jessica said it’s been around longer than that. G.W. Kendall, in Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition in 1844, wrote, “When a man is disappointed in any thing he undertakes, when he has seen enough, when he gets sick and tired of any job he may have set himself about, he has ‘seen the elephant.'”

I didn’t know much about the background men in the unit, but I could see in the eyes of some of the guardsmen they were looking way beyond the pines and palmettos of north central Florida. What was a war game to most was very real to some.

2000-Yard Stare

West Palm Beach National Guard unit at Camp Blanding summer campLife Magazine published a painting by World War II artist and correspondent Tom Lea in 1945. The 1944 panting of a Marine at the Battle of Peleliu – the site of the highest casualty rate of any battle in the Pacfic –  became known as the 2,000-Yard Stare.

Lea said of his subject, “He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day. Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?”

Memorial Day is more than picnics and a day off from work.

 

 

 

 

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