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Cheryl Hughes: The Worst Day In America

My Career As A Woman

My friend, Jeanne LeBlanc, asked for a pair of red cowboy boots for Christmas one year.  She was forty-five and living in California at the time.  Jeanne had fond memories of the pair she had gotten for Christmas when she was six and living in her home state of Louisiana.  She wanted to revisit the joy of walking around in red cowboy boots.  I know that joy, for I too received a pair of red cowboy boots for Christmas when I was six and living in Kentucky.
I wanted a pair of white Go-Go boots when they became a very visible part of the wardrobe of the sixties, but by that time there were too many children and not enough cash to go around for extras in our family.  I was a junior in high school when I received a pair of knee boots for Christmas.  They were all I had asked for.  They were all I got, which was fine with me.  I wanted to be part of the landscape of America, which was impossible to do without the right shoes.
Platform shoes and hiking boots and tennis shoes and Crocs and Chucks and, and, and…America, the land of endless shoes; Americans, always on the move, always trying to get somewhere, anywhere but where we are now.  America as a destination seems almost ironic, but that is what our country is for much of the world, a point toward which to walk.
This week on NPR, there was an interview with a shoe-shine guy at Charlotte International Airport.  The man goes by the name, Gate Two.  For five dollars, Gate Two cleans, conditions, massages and shines countless pairs of shoes back to life.  He takes pride in his work, and he is very happy with his career choice.  It is a life he could barely have believed existed when he was walking his way out of war-torn Ethiopia at the age of fourteen. 
I wonder if he even had shoes while on his two-week journey out of that country.  I wonder if he even had shoes when he arrived here, a place where he shines the shoes of people who have never walked into or out of Ethiopia. 
Everything is relative, I tell myself as I remember a friend, Sasha, who stood patiently for hours in ragged shoes while waiting for bread in Russia, then  found herself complaining over a ten-minute delay at a McDonalds’ counter, while wearing Reeboks. 
Gate Two returned to Ethiopia when the country reached a point of stability.  He wanted to see if anything had changed.  He found that there were still street children—like he was once—without hope or direction.  He gave one such girl a shoe-shine kit, the only gift he knew to give.  He has since established a small charity for these children.  He gives ten percent of what he makes at the Charlotte airport.
“Cheers,” says Gate Two to each traveler who steps down from his chair, wearing resuscitated shoes.  The interviewer seems in awe of this attitude, one that has remained positive in the face of so much adversity.  He asks Gate Two how it is possible.  “The worst day in America is the best day in Africa,” he says as he goes to work on the next pair of shoes.

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