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Remembering Christmas: Shoe Polish Melted, Boots Shined, We Loved
I grew up from the ages of seven to twenty-one in a four-room apartment in south St. Louis, Missouri. Our little apartment was newly built and clean when we moved in, but it didn’t stay that way long. However, it was home to us, all we knew, and we knew love there.
My family faced many challenges, even with the love. Our holidays were filled with my parents drinking even more than usual, which was significant. My sister and I, however, never experienced any direct abuse.
Sometimes, things could be funny in such a small house, one in which the living room sofa served as my bedroom most of the years we lived there.
When I was 17 and a senior in high school, I participated in a program called DECA, the Distributive Education Clubs of America. We were supposed to learn business principles, get jobs, and become familiar with working in various phases of a retail environment. I took it because I had all my credits and only wanted to go to school for a half day.
We were supposed to have a job for the other half of the day, well, at least have a job where we worked about twenty hours a week. I got a job at a Hill Bros. Shoes store, and I was still working there leading up to Christmas at the end of the fall semester.
