Shoe Shine Boy (1943)
When you hit twelve or thirteen in my old neighborhood of 162nd Street and Third Avenue in the Bronx, a job became a necessity. An allowance was unheard of and a teenager pulled his own weight and made his own spending money. I tried delivering prescriptions for Rothhaus drugstore and orders for the local grocery. Neither was very rewarding nor reliable. The worst place was in front of the A&P. Hoards of boys stood outside the new A&P on Third Avenue at 163rd Street badgering the overloaded women as they left the store, offering to carry their bundles for tips. Many women used this eager help; the A&P was several blocks from their homes, cars were almost nonexistent, and several flights of stairs had to be climbed when they got there. The housewives were never generous tippers so the A&P "job" paid poorly. The field was also very crowded, with far more boys than overloaded shoppers. Many colored boys, recent arrivals on Boston Road, swelled the A&P crowd and made this venture even less promising.
After a few wasted Saturday afternoons at the A&P, I decided to try my luck as a shoeshine boy. For many boys then, the shoeshine boy was the first step to independence. Shined shoes were serious business at the time for white-collar men. Enclosed shoeshine booths were located at many major street crossings. Inside every shoe repair store were a row of elevated shoe shine seats with one or two full-time shoe shine men. At the foot of every "El" station, shoe shine boys sat on their boxes soliciting every man that passed by. On Saturday evenings three or four boys were usually set up outside the United Cigar Store at the foot of the 161st Street Third Avenue “El” station.
My brother Jack had a shoe shine box before me and he showed me the trade. I don’t remember where I got my shine box. One could be store-bought but I'm sure mine wasn't. Jack probably obtained the box in a deal from an older boy who had moved up in the world. The shoe shine box was a simple but solid rectangular box, with a metal or wooden foot rest for the customer's foot, and with open tops on each side to access the tools of the craft. It was just high enough for a kneeling boy to
vigorously pop a polishing cloth back and forth across the front of the shoe. The foot rest also served as the carrying handle and some boxes had a carrying strap.
We got our supplies from "Jack’s", a little house wares store on Third Avenue. I remember my brother Jack shepherding me past the watchful eyes of the justly suspicious Jewish shop owner. We purchased the essentials; polishing clothes, polishing brushes, two tins of Griffin shoe polish, powder puffs to spread the polish, two little bottles of “liquid”, and little round brushes to apply the liquid. This liquid was a colored shoe cleaning fluid and only one bottle of each color liquid was ever purchased. The initial purchase lasted forever through frequent addition of water supplements. Most boys only had two of each item, one black, one brown. The more professional craftsmen also had a complement for light brown, but that was rich stuff. One mature shoe shine man, King David, had an extremely large selection of multi-tone polishes in an elaborate Cadillac-sized shoe box as well as a folding chair for the customer. The King made a full time job of shining shoes and had many of the courthouse people as regular clientele.
The memory of the shoe shine process, still vivid after so many years, returns with the distinctive smell of shoe polish each time I use it. The customer would nervously watch over your shoeshine efforts. First the watered-down cleaning liquid was applied to the shoe, one at a time, with the little round brush. The shoe was then buffed dry with the back of the polishing cloth. Then the polish was applied with the little power puff. During this time the anxious customer repeatedly cried out “Watch out! Watch the socks! Don’t get the polish on the socks!”
Each shoe was rubbed with a brush, then buffed with a buffing brush. There was always a grand finale with
vigorous rubbings and popping's of the shine cloth. Each boy worked at perfecting a snapping motion that gave the loudest popping sound to show off his expertise. The customer would hand over his nickel, usually with another nickel for a tip and make his escape. I realize now that their anxiety was justified and wonder that they risked their socks and pants legs to the untested skills of kids like myself. I guess well-shined shoes had more importance then.
Besides haunting the sidewalk beside the Third Avenue “El” station at 161st Street, we would often walk over to the Grand Concourse in pursuit of business. The broad expanse of the Concourse was then a beautiful stretch of new and expensive apartment houses, populated almost exclusively by seemingly prosperous Jews. Each weekend legions of well dressed Jewish men filled every park bench in Joyce Kilmer Park opposite the Concourse Plaza Hotel. We had the mistaken idea that each man in these crowds would be eager for a shoeshine. We were badly mistaken and it took us many lost days of little or absolutely no business to teach us that lesson. Years later I learned how mistaken we were from a fellow engineer, David, who was born and raised on the Concourse. He said that many Jewish families on the Concourse at that time could barely pay the rent. They lived there because their standing in the community demanded it. His family had several relatives living with them in a small apartment to afford the rent.
My brother Jack soon left this miserly trade to be a errand boy at Mike’s grocery on the corner and then moved again to a pin-spotting job in the local bowling alley. My brother Joe started shining shoes with me but was soon much more successful than I. He found a spot as the shine boy in a small social club. Before the regular Saturday night dances he polished away and pocketed great tips from guys trying to impress their friends. I was left outside the door of the bar downstairs, squatting on my shine box, wistfully waiting for a live one to come down the stairs from the Third Avenue "El".
During these shoe shine days my "little" brother Joe showed his separate personality in another way. It was a small event but I still remember it. We came home after a small amount of luck shining shoes. Joe took me into the small hamburger shop on the Third Avenue corner of our block. I had never been in it before but Joe seemed a regular customer. At Joe’s direction the chef made us hot dogs served in a special way. The hot dog was sliced lengthwise, grilled, and served like a cross stack of chips on a hamburger roll with big thin slices of pickle. It was about the best tasting hot dog I ever had. What really impressed me was that Joe was spending his shoe shine money, an independent action I hadn’t even thought of doing myself. I usually took my shoeshine earnings home to my mother, sometimes a whole buck on a good day. Now my kid brother had showed me another way. Well, I was used to my older brother and sister doing things that were new to me but this experience with Joe was something else. I still recall a feeling of surprise or unease when Joe played this man of the world act on me. I realized then that my little brother was his own person with his own way of doing things.
My shoe shining job was short-lived but educational. One day a customer put a shoe on my shoeshine box and asked for a shine. I noted that it was an unusual shoe. It was mannish but slim in shape and, even to my immature eye, definitely feminine in style. I sneaked a look up at my customer and noted a slim young person with close cut clothing and unusual close-cut but wavy hair. I sneaked another look at the face and noted, to my confusion, the customer seemed to be a young woman. I finished the shine, accepted my money, and watched her walk briskly away. When I went home I mentioned it to my father. “Oh, that was probably Jeanine,” Pop replied. “She is a girl who thinks she is a man.”
Another day Joe and I were walking with our shine boxes on 161st Street by Melrose Avenue. Two black boys, bigger and older than I, stopped us and demanded our boxes and our money. A young white man saw what was happening and told them to get lost. This was my first experience, way back in 1943, of the racial problem that within ten years would have a massive impact on the Bronx.
Another event is clear in my memory. There was heavy competition among the shoe shine boys. Three or four boys were usually set up on Saturday evenings outside the United Cigar Store at the foot of the 161st Street “El” station. Bigger boys would chase the smaller boys and furious fights would sometimes occur. One evening I started out and found that all the spots in front of the United Cigar Store were taken. I set up my box across the street in front of the Court Bar and beside the entrance to the upstairs social club. A bigger boy soon showed up and chased me and I went home. Jack asked why I had returned so soon and I told him my problem. Jack, who was much bigger and more aggressive than I, never shirked a fight. He told me to go back down and he would take care of it. I went back to my former spot on the street and was no sooner there when Pop came by and asked for a shine. I shined one of Pop’s shoes and was still on my knees working on the other shoe when my rival came over. He made a motion to kick me in the face. Jack suddenly appeared and hit him with a single punch that sent him reeling. An instant later a man rushed out of the bar, grabbed Jack, and raised his hand to
strike him. My father grabbed the man and backed him against a car parked at the curb. Pop hit him once in the face and the man actually flew over the hood of the car onto the street. At that Pop decided that all three of us should head for home. For years afterward Pop teased me that I never had shined the other shoe.
After that, neither Joe nor I stayed long in the shoe shine trade. The truth was that shining shoes took a lot of time and made practically no money. I returned to delivering prescriptions for Rothhaus’ drug store and packages for the meat market beside Jack’s
house wares store. For several sparse months I had little spending money until I started in Duffy’s grocery store but my career as a shoe shine boy was over.