This morning I "offered" to polish my wife's black work shoes. (Actually, she kind of left them in the middle of the bedroom floor and I took the hint.) All of our shoe-polishing gear is contained in a family heirloom that I somehow inherited in the late 80's after my parents died and the house was sold. As shown above, this heirloom is a small, oak shoe-shining box with a label on it proclaiming it to be a Griffin Shinemaster. I have very few clear memories of my childhood but whenever I use the Shinemaster one memory always springs to mind. Today I decided to write that memory down for posterity.
Back in the early 60's, my father used to work at IBM. That meant that he had to get dressed up in a suit and a tie every day and put on a pair of dress shoes. Starting when I was about 7 years old, my brother Tom and I were given the weekly chore of polishing his two pair of dress shoes in the basement. As I recall, they were both black wingtips, which would make sense since I'm pretty sure my father wore a light grey suit to work every day. One pair might've been brown, but I digress. The point is that Tom and I shared the chore of polishing our father's shoes.
Tom was a year and a half older than me and big and strong for his age. I, on the other hand, was pretty small and weak for my age. As expected, Tom beat me in virtually everything we did together, whether it was wrestling on the floor, riding a bike, playing tag, flipping baseball cards, throwing a ball or playing pool. My father was undoubtedly aware of this. When we had finished shining his shoes he used to inspect them to see who did the better job. He always praised both our efforts but, somehow, always found a way to judge my shining job to be a little bit better.
I forgot to mention that Tom was also very smart. He soon realized that the game was rigged and hatched a plan. One week, after completing our shining chore, he convinced me to switch shoes with him before we came up from the basement. Rube that I was, I agreed. When my father once again judged the shoes I held to be shined slightly better, Tom let out a cry of victory,. He turned to me and said, "See?? He always picks your shoes!" I don't remember how my father reacted, but I felt a little sorry for him. Even worse, I felt that I had let him down. I don't remember him judging our shoe-polishing efforts ever again.
Postscript:
While I couldn't find anything conclusive on the web, I'm making an educated guess that the Griffin Shinemaster was a product of Griffin Shoe Care, a company founded in 1890 in Brooklyn, NY. Their web page claims that they "went on to revolutionize the shoe shine industry by inventing products such as liquid shine and the shoe shine box." Inventing the shoe shine box is a pretty bold claim, one that you would think their website would go at length to prove, possibly with a copy of the actual patent. Sadly, Griffin Shoe Care offers no proof whatsoever. Even worse, although their website advertises a host of shoe care products and shoe accessories, there's not a shine box to be found.
