I live in a small town, a town where very little changes from day to day. I walk downtown almost every day, and almost a week ago I noticed something in a parking lot.
They’re still there. They are becoming part of the unchanging substrate of small town life.
I had to look more closely. After all, maybe they contained feet and I would become part of a rural murder mystery! Television and novels tell me that happens all the time.
They don’t contain feet. They seem to be stuffed with damp, moldering leaves, which is a little odd, but not sufficient to warrant calling in a small town sheriff.
They seem to have been worked hard — the leather is stretched and scuffed, the seams are loose but still holding everything together. They’re in the kind of shape where, if they were my boots, I’d start thinking I definitely need new shoes, but I’d tell myself I could keep using them for one more year. Which I’d tell myself again every year for a couple of years.
I checked. They wouldn’t fit me. They were much too large and very wide. In fact, I was surprised by how big they are. Whoever owned them had to be at least 300 pounds, and I could tell these boots had a hard life every day. Maybe they’re relieved to be resting in an empty lot, soothed by the rain, communing with the bugs that come around to visit.
It’s weird. Somedays I’m intensely curious about where they come from, who left them there, why they abandoned them here, what kinds of interesting things their owner did while wearing them…other days I’m like “Hello, boots. I wouldn’t mind joining you sometime. Tell me about the life of an old boot decaying on the pavement.”
This post has no significance, I’m just contemplating some soggy old boots.
For sale: baby shoes. never worn.
“Stuffed with leaves…”
Abandoned leftovers from last year’s scarecrow?
Apologies for the OT post, but I figured you might enjoy this bit about AI spiders:
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3028
I guess those boots don’t make good habitats for spiders, do they?
These boots are made for parkin’
And that’s just what they’ll do
And one o’ these days these boots
are gonna park in a lot near you
(descending bass figure)
creepiest ‘boots’ poem ever. Used in the trailer for 28Years Later
A homeless person who’s found something more seasonal? And the leaves were insulation?
(Except why would a homeless person deliberately spend the winter in Minnesota?)
Reminds me of one of Michael Moore’s movies where he interviewed people living in the decay of Detroit and they talk about how the abandoned neighborhoods were full of abandoned shoes… He arranged them in lines in the street as I recall.
All units, be on the lookout for a barefoot, tall man. Weight estimated to be north of 300 lbs. Name is Paul. Paul Bunyan. Subject known to be wearing a black and red plaid jacket and hunter’s cap. Possibly accompanied by a blue ox. That is all.
He was raptured, and we are living in the Great Tribulation.
Seems maybe the beginning of another disturbing Ari Aster film.
In my neck of the woods sneakers hanging over a powerline by their shoelaces might signify something less ominous.
I have a friend who left an old pair of walking boots outside for a long time. They are now an ecosystem unto themselves. You can see them here, row 2, on the right. https://lotteglob.co.uk/sculpture-croft
Before I retired, I used to walk from home to the bus stop, usually across a large parking lot, or along the sidewalk that abutted it. Over time, I ran across a remarkable number of single shoes, at least a dozen, which always made me curious about why just the one, what happened to its mate? What was also interesting was to watch the changes from day to day of each discovered item, and speculate on the how and why of those changes. Like one day it would be here, the next day it was two yards farther up the path, or in the same place but its orientation reversed, as if each shoe had a life of its own, until one day it would disappear entirely. It’s a phenomenon that still fascinates me.
I’m surprised it wasn’t just the left one. You know, the one by the side of the highway you see from time to time.
Maybe I’m weird, but this was my first association: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea_human_foot_discoveries
what ahcuah @6 said, but maybe with the additional possibility of using filling to help with overly large boots for their feet?, and maybe they discarded them upon finding a better fitting pair of footwear?
Certainly Minnesota is going to be a lot more difficult climate for the unhoused, than, say, the SF Bay Area, but I suspect there is a significant unhoused population in Minnesota. Society is getting worse for a lot of people, and a lot can manage to find ways to survive with very little in the way of financial resources.
It would be nice if we could build a society that favored compassion and general human welfare of the profit margins of a tiny fraction of people…
That’s Felonious Orange, with the shit kicked out of him.
Maybe they’re Tom Hanks’.
https://shoeeffect.com/why-does-tom-hanks-post-pictures-of-gloves-and-shoes/