“Sir . . . I gotta tell you . . .”
Gotta tell me what, Marine?
The Lance Corporal was standing in front of me in the chow line.
It was Wednesday, slider day, at the Naval Station Rota, Spain, galley.
I had been invited to join the base Commanding Officer and Executive Officer--the CO and XO, respectively.
My two-week active-duty stint required that I sit around and drink coffee all day with the XO, a good buddy from my squadron days.
“We go every week,” the XO had said. “The CO and I never miss it.”
The CO was also an Aviator. And Aviators don’t pass up sliders.
Neither do Marines, apparently.
I was immediately suspicious when this one turned around to speak to me.
Marines are taught at a young age to stare down their noses at Navy guys.
Most go through the motions of proper military protocol.
They salute and say sir.
But the looks on their faces suggest it causes them great pain to do so.
But that wasn’t the case with this Lance Corporal.
He seemed excited about something.
“Those shoes,” he continued, “are on point.”
On point? What the hell does that mean? Is that good?
“Excuse me?” I replied.
“Those shoes are just . . . outstanding,” the Marine answered.
He was pointing down at my brown leather uniform shoes.
I was floored.
This was unprecedented.
“You just made my day,” I told the Lance Corporal. “Actually, I think you just made my week.”
He smiled back at me.
“You understand,” I continued, “that in the entire history of the Navy and Marine Corps, no Marine has ever complimented a Navy guy’s shoes.”
It’s true. Look it up.
“Well, sir,” the Marine replied, “those are some pretty great shoes.”
Indeed.
And I was damn proud of them.
The shoes you buy at the uniform store are incapable of looking as good as my shoes did.
Government contracts go to the lowest bidder, be they for spy satellites or leather shoes.
And cheap leather doesn’t hold a shine.
A former boss, a Marine Corps officer who went on to wear four stars, taught me that.
The solution is to buy civilian shoes of the same design, but of better quality.
Florsheim has a model identical to that prescribed by military uniform regulations.
And they cost three times as much as the ones in the uniform store.
But they last forever and, with proper care, yield a mirror-like shine.
Like the ones I was wearing in the chow line.
But there was even more going on with my shoes.
Florsheim didn’t offer a shade of brown that precisely matched that of Navy-issue uniform shoes.
I bought an off-shade pair anyway and tried to fix them with large quantities of polish.
It didn’t work.
So, I took them to the shoe guy in town, explained what I was trying to accomplish, and asked if he could help.
The guy’s an artist and immediately embraced the challenge.
“Oh, I can fix them,” he said.
He used some chemical to strip the finish off the shoes and extract all the color from the leather.
He then dyed the leather the color I wanted, but a couple shades lighter.
Then, to close the gap, he applied multiple coats of dark-brown polish.
As a result, the shoes had a layered, three-dimensional quality that resembled antique mahogany.
And a shine you could comb your hair in.
In a word, they were glorious.
As you may have gathered, brown shoes are important to Naval Aviators.
That’s because, for the longest time, only Aviators were authorized to wear brown. Everyone else had to wear black.
They’re a status symbol. Like the leather jacket.
The same is true of the brown flight boots you wear with a flight suit.
But for the entire time I was in the cockpit, Aviators were issued black boots.
I didn’t think much of it, because I still got to wear brown shoes with my khakis.
Sure, I would have preferred brown boots. Like I said, it’s a status thing.
I knew a couple guys who went rogue and decided they’d wear brown boots, regulations be damned!
One guy stopped polishing his black boots for an entire deployment.
They took on a dull, gray, suede-like appearance.
Then, he hit them with brown polish, and--voila!--brown boots.
It was the DIY version of what my guy had done to my Florscheims.
They looked great, I had to admit.
But no way did I have the guts to stray outside the bounds of uniform regulations like this guy had.
Luckily, the regulations eventually changed, and brown boots were authorized.
But, unfortunately for me, by the time they had, I had left flight status.
I couldn’t just walk into a squadron’s supply department and order up a pair of Navy-issue brown flight boots.
They saved those for people who actually flew for a living.
So, some years later, I spent an entire deployment in crappy, ship-issued coveralls instead of a flight suit, because I didn’t have brown flight boots.
It was demoralizing. And wrong.
Then, one day, a ray of light shone down.
I was chatting with the ship’s captain, a career F/A-18 Hornet guy. He’d just been tapped to command an aircraft carrier.
Clearly, this guy was going places.
The captain wore a flight suit every day and the most spectacular brown boots.
They had the same layered, mahogany look as my brown shoes.
Of course, I had to ask him about them.
Turns out, they were not Navy-issue. They were a pair of Red Wings of the same design as the old black flight boots.
He’d bought them back in the late Nineties before the regulations allowed for brown boots.
“Yeah, I love these things,” he said. “I’ve had them re-soled about four times.”
So, apart from my simple appreciation for the beauty of the captain’s boots, why did I find them so inspiring?
Because I had a pair of exactly the same boots sitting in my garage.
I’d bought them when I’d gone to work for the railroad.
And I’d worn them around numerous railyards and factories in the decade since.
Yes, they had a few miles on them. And looked like it.
Nonetheless, when I received orders to a reserve unit where flight suits were authorized, I resolved to make them my new flight boots.
And ten coats of dark-brown polish and a lot of elbow grease later,
I am proud to report,
They, too, are glorious.
Thank you, Captain,
For your terrific example.
And for the non-Aviators out there . . .
You can keep your crappy coveralls and black boots.
I won’t be needing them anymore.