Tim Chitwood: Quality shoe gets a reboot

You're going to need a quality shoe.

You're going to need a couple of them, actually, if you have to stand on your own two feet. I used that singular opening sentence because it comes from a Mark Knopfler song named "Quality Shoe," part of which goes:

"For that trip by road or rail, for extra grip on those rocky trails, you're gonna need a quality shoe."

That song plays in my head every time I get an email reminder that the Muscogee County Library Foundation's having a "Wine, Women And Shoes" fashion show fundraiser Thursday at the 3000 Macon Road library, which is to be well decorated for this elegant 6 p.m. affair, for which general admission is $75.

The elaborate décor should signal this is not a children's book festival or other family event, but if not, maybe some signs will be set out. ("No Wine, No Women, No Shoes, No Service.")

The musicians have been encouraged to perform songs related to the motif, but I doubt "Quality Shoe" will make the cut.

This fundraiser's focused on women's shoes, so that leaves any corresponding male-oriented event up for grabs. ("Boys, Booze and Boots.")

I might be interested in that, because I don't wear quality shoes anymore. My business tears up dress shoes the way construction work eats boots.

A pair of dress shoes lasts about a year, I've found. And you know why: Because we're shoe-leather reporters. We report from the street. We're your action eyewitness exclusive on-the-scene news team.

Dress shoes don't hold up well when you're hiking through a scrap yard, wading a creek or following railroad tracks to wherever someone found a dead body this time.

After a year of trekking to where someone will go no more, you profit only by getting the news as you lose your sole. Either the bottom wears out or the stitching comes loose.

Every time I tore through another pair of dress shoes, I wore my lightweight hiking boots to work until I could get to the shoe store.

Finally I just kept wearing the boots. And it turned out lightweight water-resistant boots are suited to Columbus, where the streets flood and the ground turns to mud and puddles form on the trails and in parking lots.

For instance, the other day when I came to work, I parked on the top deck of a garage, opened my door, stuck my umbrella out, and while looking up as the umbrella opened, stepped into four or five inches of standing water.

This just shows that (1) sometimes pavement that looks level when it's dry actually has a dip in it, and (2) if you walk through five-inch-deep water wearing dress shoes, you'd better have a change of socks.

Lucky for me, I was in my hiking boots, so my feet stayed dry -- well, mostly. They might have got a little wet. I think my boots are wearing out, too.

Maybe one day I'll shop for another pair at the "Bubbas, Brogans And Brewskis" fundraiser.

Tim Chitwood, tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com, 706-571-8508.

This story was originally published November 8, 2015 at 10:04 PM with the headline "Tim Chitwood: Quality shoe gets a reboot ."