The Shoe Brush Story

We moved to Brooklyn when I was five years old, and for the most part, this Blog is dedicated to Indiana events. But no history of our family would be complete without “The Shoe Brush Story.”

The house, in Loveland, Ohio, was a big, old, drafty, two-story frame structure. The winter mornings were cold so when I got out of bed I immediately sought heat sources to keep warm. One of my favorites was the dishwasher. In the old days, dishwashers weren’t built in, so you could sit on top them if you were a little kid, and I was only four. I was perched on top the dishwasher, warming myself and minding my own business, when the events that would lead to the great shoe brush incident began to unfold.

My father, wanting to encourage his children to understand the value of his hard-earned money, would occasionally give us the opportunity to earn a nickel by shining his shoes. Because he was an important FEDERAL employee, he wore a suit to work and he needed shiny shoes. This particular morning, Dad told Dennis he could shine his shoes. “That’s not fair! I protested, “Why does Dennis get a nickel and I don’t?” Dad, exasperated by the fact that he was now dealing with an argument instead of getting ready for work, tried to solve the problem by telling me I could also shine a pair of shoes. At this point, the story should have had a happy ending, with Dennis and I shining our Dad’s shoes and earning our nickels. But there was one problem: Dennis had the black shoe brush and he was shining brown shoes! I had the brown shoe bush and I had black shoes to shine. The solution should have been simple; switch brushes with Dennis.

But he wouldn’t.

“DAAAAD! Dennis won’t give me the right shoe brush!” I yelled in my whiniest voice. By this time, Dad was well into his morning fire drill, desperately trying to get out the door on time and he was not pleased with having to mediate a fight. “Trade Brushes with John!” Dad barked.

But he wouldn’t.

Dennis said it didn’t matter what color the brush was and in direct defiance of my father (a FEDERAL employee,) Dennis would not trade brushes with me. When I tried to bring him into compliance with my father’s orders, by snatching the brush, he bolted from the kitchen. “STOP!” I yelled.

But he wouldn’t.

The kitchen adjoined a room that seemed too big to be a foyer but was not really big enough to be used as a dining room. This room served as the hub of the first floor. You could cross to the front door, the living room, the nursery, the master bedroom or return to the large, eat-in kitchen. The open stairway, to the second floor, also ascended from this room. At the bottom of the staircase were two large windows that looked out over the hill that sloped away from the house into a wooded area. Dennis crossed the room, headed for the stairs, trying to escape into the maze of rooms that made up the second floor. I knew that if he made it upstairs, he would be out of reach, and there would be little chance of Dad being able to deal with him before he left for work.

If the authority of my father was to be protected, if the rule of law were to be upheld, Dennis had to be stopped. I quickly weighed my options and arrived at the only decision that made sense. I cocked my arm back, clutched the brown shoe brush tightly in my right hand and took aim at Dennis’ head. And then, with everything that was in me, I launched the brush toward its mark. I wasn’t trying to kill Dennis, only knock him unconscious. Then, it would be a simple matter to take the brush from his limp hand. (It may seem remarkable to you that a four-year-old child could have had such clarity of thought, but I was a remarkable child.)

From the moment the shoe brush left my hand, time was altered, the world moved in slow motion; the shoe brush rotating though the air, Dennis mounting the first step on the stairway, Dad moving about in his bedroom. I watch as the brush drifted through space, past Dennis’ head and through the large window at the bottom of the stair. The glass splintered and then fell to earth like a shower of diamonds. My father's voice broke the slow-motion spell, “WHAT THE H…” Dad surveyed the scene while spewing venom. “BONEHEAD! KNUCKLEHEAD! BONEHEAD!” he boiled as he realized that not only was he going to be late, he would also have to deal with the colossal window mess.

But it was Dennis’ fault. He was really responsible for the broken window. If he had obeyed my father and traded brushes with me, there would have been no reason for me to try and knock him out. Fortunately for me, my father saw it the same way I did. After all, he had told Dennis to trade brushes with me. Hurling the shoe brush at Dennis’ head was a “reasonable use of force” on my part. Dad realized this, so it was understandable that Dad, even though he was late for work, took the time to give Dennis the whumpin he deserved.

As I watched Dennis take his lickun, my mind drifted back to when I was only a few months old. I was laying on my back, in the crib when suddenly, the silhouette of a boy blocked out the sunlight. I could see that the boy was wielding a weapon. It was a hairbrush. Over and over again, the hairbrush came crashing down on my skull! I was too little to defend myself; all I could do was cry. I screamed for my life and just before I drifted into unconsciousness, my mother came and pulled Dennis out of my crib. The incident left me with an irregularly shaped head; “knot head” became my nickname. “Dennis was too little to know what he was doing”, my Mom told me later, but I knew better. He escaped punishment then, but he was carrying that debt with him. Now the Universe was being brought back into balance, Dennis was being spanked. Not only for the offenses of that morning, but for that long-ago attempt on my life.

There are some that will argue with the accuracy of his account. All I can tell them is to watch for flying shoe brushes.