I bronzed my shoes and I hung 'em from a rearview mirror Bronzed admiration in a blind spot of regret There was all these things that I don't think I remember Hey, how lucky can one man get? - John Prine "How Lucky"
The things you find
My sister and I keep finding memories of the past as we settle our mother’s estate. At the botton of a trunk I found a shoe of mine that had been bronzed. What a flashback to the the 1950s.
It was the fashion at the time to bronze baby shoes. However this shoe is five and half inches in length. I was hardly a baby when it was bronzed. In the majority of my baby pictures I am barefoot (see featured photo). As the first born I was awarded the honor of having my shoes preserved in such a way. Actually just a single shoe. My two sisters didn’t have bronze footware, I did because it was another perk of being the first born.
I have an anecdotal information about how this all came about. My father had a Popular Mechanics encyclopedia of home projects. He made several lamps out of old pottery scotch bottles and I remember matching lamps made from wooden dowels wrapped with twine. I’m guessing there was probably instructions for electroplating your child’s shoes. What I heard was that he coated the shoe with graphite to make it conductive and immersed it in a solution of copper sulfate with some sulfuric acid. A battery charger was used to supply power for the plating, the positive lead would be connected to a copper plate, the negative to the graphite coated shoe. To agitate the solution during the plating process he depended on wind power, a fishing line connected to a branch and a pivoted paddle. If this was the way it happened, I am happy I didn’t find it and poison myself with those chemicals.
Sadly I only have the single shoe. A pair would be nice hanging on my rearview mirror, in bronzed admiration in a blind spot of regret.
I still have one bronzed shoe that has been on my dresser for as long as I can remember. It contains valuable stuff like old tie clasps, collar stays, a few golf tees and ball markers. Unlike yours, mine is clearly a baby shoe. Somewhere tucked away in a scrap book is a little plastic pouch with some clippings from my first haircut. Little did I know that I could use those clippings now!
Why weren’t we allowed to grow long hair when we could? We now have plenty of years for the baldy look?
Not only did we cousins grow up in the best of times surrounded by a wonderful intertwined family village, but we have cousins John Poltrack and Rick Thorpe as master historians to preserve the cherised memories