By Jim Hagarty
1986
There never was a more useful piece of apparel designed for the human body than the lowly rubber boot. It is to clothing what the potato is to food: it’s basic, plain and economical.
And like the majority of the people whose feet occupy the insides of them, rubber boots are agricultural and they make good sense.
You won’t find any stylized little metal cougars, crocodiles or polar bears glued to the outside of a pair of rubber boots to make them look rugged, macho and yuppie-ish. Nor are there any fancy bronze-coloured eyelets to hold black, designer laces. There’s no fancy stitching doing loops and curves around the back, down the sides and across the front. There’s not a trace of down or acrylic insulation on the inside.
And best of all, rubber boots have nothing to do with jogging. And, you don’t have to kill any animals to make them.
When you buy a pair of rubber boots, what you get is a pair of rubber boots. You’re not buying style and flair and flash. You’re buying something to keep your feet dry.
When you go into a store to buy a pair of rubber boots, you don’t announce that you’d like to see something in a rubber boot. You say: “Rubber boots, please. Size 8.” And over the counter will come several yards of shiny, black rubber shaped in the form of human feet and lower legs. The only concession to style will be two thin bands of red rubber around the tops and just above the soles.
The rubber boot is the most democratic piece of clothing around although the running shoe is gaining fast on it in that category. People of all ages and both sexes wear them. Fifty years before “unisex” clothing hit the market, farm wives and their husbands wore each other’s rubber boots and nobody thought a thing about it.
A boy’s first shave has long been accepted as the North American male’s rite of passage from childhood to manhood but it really happens long before he first scrapes that blade across his pubescent chin. A farm boy of two, three or four years old becomes a man after the big trip to the general store or the farm supply centre for his first pair of rubber boots. When he pulls them on for the first time and heads out to do the chores with his dad, he ages years in the minutes it takes them to walk from the house to the barn.
Rubber boots are perfect for walking across two-feet-deep creeks. In the event of a miscalculation regarding water depth, their owner need only sit down on the bank on the other side, remove the boots and dump the water – and occasional pollywog – back into the stream. They’ll be dry by morning.
It’s impossible to imagine one other form of footwear a person wouldn’t mind walking through a manure pile or mud hole in but with your rubber boots on, who cares? A quick swish with the hose and you could wear them into an operating room. In fact, years ago, one Perth County doctor-farmer was known to show up at the hospital for emergency operations with his rubber boots still on.
Of course, like all other good things in this world including grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate ice cream and a night at the movies, rubber boots have their down side. They’re slippery when wet, wet and forevermore useless when punctured, cold in the winter and hot in the summer, uncomfortable when stones and straw get in them and murder when you drop rocks, boards or tools larger than hammers on the toes which are not made of steel.
And worst of all by far, is the rubber boot’s infuriating habit of pulling down your socks. There’s no known remedy for this problem. And, boots a teeny bit too small will quickly rub the skin off your heels that have been bared by your falling socks.
There are two types of people in this world. Those in the first category are scandalized and duly offended when someone wears a pair of rubber boots in public, especially a pair that recently carried their owner through a barnyard.
The people in the second group – aren’t.
