If the shoe fit, they could wear it

On Sunday afternoon, I kept thinking about Parker Snyder’s shoes.
Not the shoes that Parker wore himself. I was thinking about the pile of shoes in the garage.
Let me explain, or try to.
Parker was one of my father’s oldest friends in the newspaper business. It might be more appropriate to call him a crony. He was, by any measure, a character.
Parker was publisher of the Celina Daily Standard when I was a kid. His son, Frank, is publisher today and is a member of the Graphic Printing Company’s board of directors.
Back when Frank and I were knee-high-to-whatever, the Ronalds and the Snyders socialized on a pretty routine basis. Dad and Parker would talk newspapers. My mother and Frank’s mom, Margaret, would talk about the things moms talk about.
And if we were at the Snyders’ house and the kids grew bored, we might get sent out to the garage.
That’s where some of Parker’s eclectic collection of classic cars was taking shape, and that’s where we’d find the pile of shoes.
As the story goes, a truck hauling a load of shoes — all sizes, all styles — turned over in an accident. Its cargo was spilled all over the highway, with Buster Browns mingling with Keds and high heels jumbled together with wingtips.
Parker bought the pile of shoes for next to nothing. No one else wanted it. But Parker knew a bargain when he saw it.
The deal was, we could rummage through this pile of shoes as much as we wanted and if we found a pair that fit that we liked we could keep them. It was endless entertainment and a good way to keep the small fry occupied while the adults visited.
But Sunday, I wasn’t sorting shoes.
I was trying to pair compact discs with the “jewel cases” they originally came with.
For weeks, we’ve been engaged in a project remodeling my study, making it more energy efficient and getting rid of some quirky paneling that didn’t go with anything else in our house.
As part of the project, I’ve been finding a new home for my cobbled-together stereo system. Its previous set-up didn’t make sense at all. The equipment was in a closet, and the speakers were on precisely the wrong wall if you wanted to listen to something.
Now most of the equipment will be housed in a cabinet, and the speakers — including a pair of Fisher XP-33s I bought after my freshman year in college — will be positioned correctly.
Sunday the move-in process continued. As Connie did some touch up painting, I tried to bring some order to the chaos of our CD collection.
Over the years, perhaps inevitably, the CDs and cases had gotten separated. Some had migrated to other parts of the house; some were in our cars; some CDs had been put away incorrectly. And the whole thing was about as organized as Congress.
So — moving through the CDs like that pile of shoes at Parker’s garage — I worked my way through the mess, finding that our taste in music over the years was just about as much of a mix as that overturned truckload.
The variety astonished me. Everything from Bach to the Beatles, from Joshua Bell to Kaleo, from Etta James to Angelique Kidjo, from Lyle Lovett to the Wailin’ Jennys.
Not surprisingly, not everything came together. I still have a handful of CDs without cases and a handful of cases without CDs.
But at least my shoes fit.