Toughskins, Tube Socks & $28 Pumas...Back to school with you!
There was always a point in the summer when the hot, humid, somewhat slower days prevailed—and right on schedule, that instantly dreadful feeling was resurrected yet again: Little League football practice and back to school. Summer was over before it was even over.
Ugh!
Even now, the word September can summon a little bit of anxiety and instantly transport me to the holy grail of the back-to-school season: the Republic Airport Flea Market, where we acquired our "High Fashion."
In my mom's 1970 Chrysler—as big as a whale—surrounded by the smells of too much perfume, Newport 100 Menthols, and Aqua Net hairspray, the back-to-school journey began.
Seatbelts? Please.
We took the shortcut, a barely paved, broken, twisted, almost two-lane road through a neighborhood that was quite literally "the other side of the tracks." If my anxiety wasn't already at 11, a breakdown on that road would certainly give me a coronary.
After a few quick turns, we eventually found the airport road, which stretched along the perimeter of the runways. Single-engine private planes. Learjets. And a large factory building that once served as a manufacturing plant for Republic Aviation, which produced thousands of the totally awesome P-47 Thunderbolts during WWII.
Inside and outside of that building were hundreds of vendors selling everything from knock-off concert shirts to designer sunglasses.
Mom couldn't get enough of flea markets. If we had Waze back then, among all the popular flea markets of the time, Republic Airport would have been at the top of her Recents.
On the list:
5 button-down shirts5 T-shirtsStandard-issue multipack of Hanes underwearOne package of long-ass tube socks
Pants, you ask?
We went to the Husky (chubby) boys section at Sears for them. Toughskins, in all their denim and somewhat bell-bottomy glory.
Sometimes they were handmade by our neighbor...more on that another time.
That was the mission.
And that's what we accomplished.
New Sneaker Scent. Isn't Back to School just great?
Now, when it came to sneakers, I was told: one pair of good sneakahs (Long Island accent...free of charge) and one pair to "knock around in."
So that really meant two pairs of Chuck Taylors.
Then I saw them.
Pumas.
White leather. Black suede formstrip.
She looked at the flea-market discounted price.
"$28 dollahs for sneakahs?!"
I figured that was the end of that dream.
But somehow, she half-clutched the cash as she handed it to the vendor.
And then they were mine!
Orange shoebox. White tissue paper. And that new-Puma smell, which I can only describe as white leather and black suede.
Summer was kind of over. The anxiety had returned. But I had the new-clothes smell and a beautiful pair of white Pumas...
until Anthony purposefully stepped on my left foot, permanently scuffing the pristine white leather.
I looked down in complete horror.
Anthony looked at his handiwork and proclaimed:
"Now they're christened."
Ugh!
Cue the white shoe polish.
— Latchkey Boys
Where did you shop for Back-to-School?
The Mall
The Gap
J.C. Penney
Sears
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