It’s time to get some new winter boots and I’m still in shock at the prices. It’s been at least 15 years since the last purchase, and I recall even then what a task it was to find something with rubber soles. But now the price of a pair of boots is equal to a week’s groceries! And the soles are man-made. That means plastic in one form or another. Slippery, no matter what the fancy name.

I remember the box of boots of all sizes, colors and styles, which sat beside the wood box in the kitchen, when I was growing up. As soon as our boots were dry, they were thrown into one box, causing a lot of thrashing around, as we hurried to get ready for the outdoors.

As the oldest, I rarely got to wear hand-me-downs, except when a cousin with bigger feet than mine, got new boots. Then I would be offered her old ones. As I recall, there was no stigma attached to this sharing of clothes, it was just the way things were. Of course when I outgrew the hand-me-downs, they would go to one of my three sisters, all younger and smaller. There was no wasting of anything in this typical Maine household.

When I came back to Windham in 1970, one of my sisters and I carried on this Yankee tradition of “use it up, wear it out…” and when her son, a couple of years older than mine, outgrew his jeans and jackets, they went right into a box with the size written on the outside. As my son grew bigger, we opened a box that had a wardrobe the right size. It wasn’t until junior high that my son caught on that this wasn’t the way most people shopped. From then on, I had my orders: orange tag jeans, Nike sneakers, and nothing with the Sears logo on it.

During my working years in New York City and Boston, pre-motherhood, I was apt to shop in some pretty snazzy places and thought nothing of spending half a week’s pay on one pair of shoes, but time changed. Years went by and shopping at Salvation Army or Goodwill, Boston’s Morgan Memorial and many other thrift shops became chic, and I evolved into a thrift shop junkie. This got me into practice for being a single mother, with a major responsibility who needed all kinds of things.

And so, on a gloomy fall weekend, with the air of winter all around, I prowl through the aisles of our local thrift stores, looking for that slightly worn pair of L.L. Bean boots trying really hard not to get side-tracked by frivolous winter footwear that would require my feet to be in an unnatural shape.

I have grown to love my comfortable 15-year-old boots. I wonder if they could be mended with one of those little rubber bicycle tire patches? Maybe I could get one more winter’s wear out of them. And if I did that, I could get those un-waterproof, furry contraptions that caught my eye at the thrift shop. They would probably make my feet hurt but would look so cool!

See you next week.