A Sole-Searching Response to the Story of the Missing Shoe

Stamps, one can understand. Coins. Baseball cards.

They’re small, flat, engrossing and have an endearing way of vaulting in value over the years.

Not too many people, though, save old shoes.

Oh, Lou (The Toe) Groza, maybe, and the Old Lady With Too Many Children. Nancy Sinatra probably has a pair of old boots around, just for old times’ sake, and Cinderella might still have a fetish for glass slippers.

Ordinary people, though, can take old shoes or leave them alone.

Except Marco Thorne. Not that Thorne is exactly ordinary. He’s the San Diegan who found a distinctive little wood-and-leather clog on Los Angeles’ Hobart Street back in 1923, sheltered the shoe for 62 years, then, in a very tardy crise de conscience, decided maybe he ought to return it to its owner--if he could find him or her.

Made in the Midlands

Enchanted by the shoe and fascinated by the scholarly if mercurial Mr. Thorne, The Times recounted the story on June 23.

And that, we thought, was the end of it.

Right church, wrong pew.

Considering that the clog (a toddler’s shoe, really) was made only in the English Midlands, that the last one was turned out some 75 years ago, that even then most of the good folk who wore them were mill workers and their bairns--considering all this, you wouldn’t believe how many people called or wrote about the shoe. In affluent Southern California. In 1985.

Together, The Times and Thorne fielded some two dozen letters, maybe 30 phone calls. (How many shoes or fanciers are loose on the streets, Lord only knows. We modestly assume that there are some folks out there who actually don’t read The Times. Not that we know any. . . .)

And not that anyone actually wanted to claim Thorne’s shoe. They just wanted to chat, to reminisce. Some people talk skiing, some talk gourmet, others talk old shoes. And one thing leads to another. . . .

Mae Matson of Anaheim “couldn’t believe it when I saw the photo of Mr. Thorne’s shoe. It’s exactly like the one I wore, down to the number of nails.”

Matson was born in 1907 in Lancashire, England, where “My father worked in the mill; my mother was a velvet weaver.

“They had seven sons in a row, so when I came along they had the family clog maker make me a pair in celebration.

“In my village, Heywood, people wore the clogs because of the cobblestones, which would wreck ordinary shoes. They were easier to walk in in the rain, too. Of course, I just heard this, because we went to Canada the year I was born.

“In Lancashire, my father was considered a peculiar little man, always wanting to better himself, so off we went to the ‘New World.’ They kept us on Ellis Island for a while--didn’t think my folks were married. I never would have made the trip, at least not with eight children, but what a favor my father did us!

Off to Niagara Falls

“The clogs? Sure I wore them--in Canada, when I was small. Very comfortable if you wore thick socks. I knitted the legs and my mother the feet.

“We moved to Ohio--my brothers worked in the mines--but we didn’t get along too well with the Germans, so it was off to Niagara Falls. That was too icy; Dad fell down a lot. He went to spend a winter in California and sent for us in 1921.

“We lived on Menita Avenue--it’s Broadway now--and coincidentally, we had friends who lived in Mr. Thorne’s neighborhood. Somewhere along the way, my mother lent out my shoes and only one got back. . . .

“No matter; I love that little shoe from Lancashire. Lancashire, oh my. It’s a great place--to be from.”

Marie Wilson of San Diego thought her shoes, in the family for generations and “at least 100 years old,” came from the Orient.

Her grandfather, a Pennsylvania wallpaper manufacturer, traveled extensively, often to China, and never returned empty-handed. On the other hand, Grandfather, an Englishman, “used to say he loved the noise of children walking on the cobblestones in clogs.

“My father, I’m pretty sure, wore the shoes,” said Mrs. Wilson, “and my grandmother saved everything, even my father’s long curls.

“I have the shoes on the mantelpiece. I look at them whenever I dust, and I wonder about them.

“Among other things, I wonder what they’re worth; I wonder whether I could go to the Greek Islands on these shoes. . . .”

Helen Prince of Newport Beach apologized for the condition of her single clog: “It had silver buckles at one time, but one of my grandchildren ate them.”

The story of the Prince shoe gets a head start in 1852 “when my grandparents--Mormons--came across the plains and raised the first white twins in the state of Utah. My grandfather was quarrying stone for the temple in Salt Lake City when he died. His son--my uncle--finished the job, by placing the statue of the Angel Moroni on the top.”

The family in time moved to Wyoming, where Helen’s mother taught Sunday school. One of her pupils was Jimmie Kirkland.

“Jimmie died of the black measles. My mother went by to see what she could do, and Jimmie’s mother gave her the shoe as a keepsake.

“Never, never would I sell it. It reminds me of my mother, of the immigrants who made this country. I’ll just pass it along to future generations, as a reminder.”

Ann Higson of Downey called, left a cryptic message--”Own identical shoe”--and promptly left on a long vacation.

She’s not back yet. We’re sorry we missed her, but slightly less so after a conversation with Claudia Ackerlind, Higson’s co-worker at Downey Community Hospital. In uncanny coincidence, Ackerlind, of Swedish descent, remembered from childhood an incident in which “a man I knew threw his clog at his wife.

“He missed her, thank God, but the clog tore a huge hole in the wall. They made shoes to last in those days.”

Apropos of little, but totally in sync with reaction to the shoe story, Ackerlind later sent The Times an exquisite essay on immigrants, written by her mother, and a recipe for “Viking Burritos.” Serves five for $9.

Barbara Fick of Lompoc wrote to Thorne: “I remember seeing the same little shoe (or its sole-mate) in a bookcase in my grandparents’ home in Great Falls, Mont. (Both grandparents were born in Wisconsin to Swedish immigrants.) It was the kind of case with glass doors, the Waverley novels and leather-bound copies of Appleton’s Journal.

“The shoe looked lovely there, with its shiny brass studs, black wooden sole and thick leather, lustrous from use like harness leather. I thought it was a Dutch child’s shoe because of the wooden sole, though it didn’t at all resemble wooden shoes worn by my doll that had come ‘really and truly’ from Holland. . . .

“I would like to offer this supposition about your shoe: It came to America with its mate in the baggage of an immigrant family . . . kept as mementoes of the old country and passed down through several generations.

“In 1923 in Los Angeles a child found the pair in an old trunk, was fascinated, thinking they were--what? You thought a Pilgrim shoe; I thought a Dutch shoe. So the pair was taken to school, but that teacher, unlike your Miss Mernin, didn’t just say, ‘Nonsense.’ She remarked on the stupidity of anyone thinking they were ‘Pilgrim’ shoes.

“After a less-than-enjoyable school day (a wrong answer to an arithmetic question had brought another caustic remark from the teacher), the shoes were dropped on the sidewalk on the way home when a game of catch was started.

“And there they stayed until a dog carried one off and you found the other. . . .”

Elspeth Krohn Lindgren of West Covina lived on Serrania Avenue, went to the same grammar school as Thorne and well remembers the clogs. They belonged, though, to Clare McGue (nee Van Norman), who lived across the street. Clare, she thinks, still has them, “packed away somewhere.”

Memories, though, can be tricky. Thorne had had a somewhat saline recollection of his (and Elspeth’s) principal, one Mrs. Henderson, who, along with Miss Mernin, had dealt rather cavalierly with his “discovery.”

To Mrs. Lindgren, though, Mrs. Henderson was “sweet,” except to “the sneaky boys who tried to pull her wig.” (Ah there, Marco.)

“Clare and I used to go by streetcar to a cooking school on Virgil--mostly we made creamed vegetables--and got back late to school. We used to go under the trestle to catch polliwogs. This time we lost my mother’s metal compact, the one we carried the streetcar money in.

“Mrs. Henderson never punished us; I guess she understood. I guess, too, she was part of what inspired me to become a teacher too.

“It was a nice life, a good start, in the ‘20s. The shoe story brought it all back.”

Adela Joyce of Cathedral City wondered “How in the world anyone could get their feet into these clogs?”

She found hers in a “box of discards” at a warehouse auction in Palm Springs some 20 years ago. “I had no idea what they were or where they were from. I’ve shown them around a few times, and frankly, a lot of people consider them junk. I don’t. I treasure them.

“They’re beautifully made, they’re a mystery--another time, another people.

“When I was a girl in Wisconsin, some of the farmers used to wear wooden shoes, but mine have these little clasps, like the ones we used to fasten our galoshes.

“Do you remember galoshes? A real pain to put on, but worth it once you did. That ‘squoosh-squoosh’ when you walked in the snow! Delicious!

“I wonder what clogs sounded like?”

Dorothy Lown of Westlake Village remembers the shoes made for her grandfather in Birmingham, England, in 1907. As a child in New Jersey, she used to “look at the shoes, which my grandfather kept on his desk, and dream of tap-dancing in them.

“Later, my grandparents built a cottage in Town River, N.J., moved the shoes there, rented the cottage out, and one shoe disappeared. My aunt, 83, still has the other, and speculates on its fate.

“I wonder--I just wonder--if one of the renters mistakenly packed the other little shoe, then moved to California. . . .”

Other letters, other calls, even a note of sanity from June Swann, Keeper of the Shoe Collection at the Central Museum in Northampton, England, who had helped Thorne trace the origins of his shoe.

“Please ask (The Times) to correct the description of this collection as being in Birmingham Museum. It is 56 miles away.

”. . . Incidentally, babies came a lot smaller 100 years ago.” So, apparently, did England.

Finally, and perhaps most pertinent, the recollection of Julie Patterson of Seal Beach, who lived on Hobart, the street where the shoe was found, in 1923--the year when the shoe was found--and went to the same school as Thorne, at the same time.

Patterson’s father had “spent several years in England as a missionary for the Mormon Church” and had brought back a pair of clogs identical to Thorne’s trophy.

“I wore them as a little girl, for dress-up, but in truth they weren’t very comfortable. They were kind of rough inside and you had to stand up very straight or the sides would cut your ankles.

“The shoes fascinated me, though, as something my father had brought from long ago and far away.

“In 1923, I was in the sixth grade and took the shoes to show my classmates. I don’t remember seeing them again.

“No, I make no claim to Mr. Thorne’s shoe. What I have are the memories.

“You could walk anywhere in those days, even a young girl, or take the trolley. I’d go downtown, alone, for dancing lessons or to swim. I’d walk at night to the library on Western, and walk home with my arms full of books.

“It was a lovely neighborhood. It was a lovely time.”

Your serve, Marco Thorne.

Mrs. Patterson’s story, he admitted, “comes the closest. And I confess I’m happy she doesn’t want the shoe. Something within me--yes, something selfish--doesn’t want to part with it.

“I’ve heard from all these wonderful people--and from a lot of old friends, too, with whom I’d lost contact--but after talking to my own two children and my wife, I just now realize how much this little inanimate object has become part of my life.

“Somehow, it haunts me, but I really don’t mind being haunted.”

A last speculation: Why did every note, every call, every letter vis-a-vis the shoe, come from a woman?

“Good question,” said Thorne, “but you catch me with my pants down, in a manner of speaking. It would seem, perhaps, that women are more attached to ‘remembrance of things past,’ that women are more, uh, sentimental.

“I say ‘it would seem’ because I don’t think it’s true.

“It’s just that men-- most men--don’t want to admit it.”

If the shoe fits. . . .