Behind the Scenes Minis: Shoes, Shoes, Shoes!

Holly and Tracy discuss how frustrating Charles Goodyear could be. Then Holly talks a lot about shoes and how much she loves them.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh lordie. We talked about Charles
Goodyear this this week. We did, dude. Yeah, So if

(00:25):
he had made all the decisions he made and it
were just him, if it was just him, yeah, fine,
maybe going to debtor's prison, maybe being in a like
rented room, eating beans with no money and in debt,
I would not have found him very frustrating. But the
fact you are a man who loves your work. Yeah,

(00:47):
the fact that he had a wife and a bajillion
children and parents that he was trying to also take
care of. And we can make a whole argument about
how like it was not okay that society made it
so that he was the one responsible and that the
other people in his life did not have the same

(01:07):
power to earn money or whatever. That was a society
he was living in. It was his job. He was
not to write the job. Yeah, to pursue to pursue
his dreams of rubber well. And it's weird, right, There's
something psychological that's very puzzling to me. Like I found.

(01:31):
The more research I did about, the more like angry
and frustrated I became. By the At one point my
husband had walked into my office and I was just like,
I'm just so tired. Yeah, just because it's really frustrating
to Like, it's like if you have a friend that
keeps making bad choices and it's painful to watch them

(01:53):
make bad choices over and over. I was like, you
you willfully kept making bad choices when like someone would
be like, here's your escape hatch, and you'd be like, no, dude,
I'm gonna keep struggling. Yeah, and again. It was all
trial and error, so it wasn't like he was like, well,
my formulas have gotten me. I really think I've worked

(02:15):
it out. I just need to make it. He was
just like, I'm gonna try something else. Yeah. Yeah. I
also understand the friends that helped him out with money
feeling deeply frustrated by him. Yes, but I also advocate
if someone in your life needs help and you help them,

(02:39):
you have helped. Let's put this out of your mind,
right right, right, Like you can focus on the fact
that that person owes you money forever, or you consider
that this was a gift that you gave that person
to help them. Yeah. Yeah, And I think I think
some of his friends were like that. They were like, yeah,
I give you a gift. But the we mentioned that

(03:01):
he got that like seven bucks from a friend that
came with a letter that was pretty chastising. But it
sounded like I did not read that letter. I only
have it literally from Good Years writings and another biographer,
and even they make it sound like the guy was like,
I'm only doing this because I care about your wife
and your kids. You gotta like get your act together, dude. Yeah. Yeah,

(03:28):
And it wasn't like that one, you know, in that
case is alone. That one is literally like a I'm
trying to help you, but also you also have to
help you. Which I would love to read that letter
because if you know I wrote that letter today, it
would be very strongly worded. But I think in a
lot of the cases when people were like when he

(03:48):
was having his debts called in, most of those are
people he had made business deals with that they were like,
I want to invest in you. You're right, rubber is
the future great? Right? Oh crap, you don't, Oh, but
you're doing right. That's a very different situation and probably
or possibly one that involved written out terms of how

(04:09):
this financial arrangement was gonna work and when payment was
due and all of that. Yeah. Probably, I uh yeah,
he was such a billy dreamer, and I in many
ways I love people like that. I love people that
have these ideas that they just become obsessed with. Like,
I love that concept, but again, not when you're actively

(04:33):
hurting people because you are ignoring the needs of those
you're supposed to care for. Yeah, Like, I feel like
the coda of his life kind of has a similar moment. Right,
he had a five day old child when he left
to go to Connecticut. Now that's not to say that

(04:53):
he shouldn't have gone to his dying daughter, but also
he's leaving his wife behind and who is postpartum to
do that, And she ended up having to travel not
long after while she was still physically probably recovering from
having a kid. Right. I don't know where the baby

(05:16):
was in this, if the baby stayed behind in DC,
or if she took the baby with her, But like,
I don't know if they had a discussion where he's like,
I hate to do this, but I gotta go because
of the things he did throughout his life. I suspect
he just said that I gotta go part and then what, Yeah,
I didn't mean to do a smear campaign against Charles Goodyear,

(05:38):
but it's a little bit tricky not to. Sometimes, you know,
we there's this tendency and a lot of writing about
inventors to assume that if they invented something important, they
were great men, okay, And often that leads to like

(05:58):
some whitewashing of their real truth, including I mean it
goes right too, like oh, and then his father's hardware
store had to close. No, it was his harved store, right,
He went out on his own and screwed up on
his own by his own self, Like I just there's
a lot of stuff that often softens kind of the

(06:20):
poor decision making that it was prote. It also reminds
me in some ways of the way that a lot
of people talk about writers and artists and other people
who are working in some kind of creative field and
really romanticizing that and making the act of creativity seem

(06:45):
like an otherworldly situation, when a lot of this is
really like, that's someone's job, and of course he's temperamental,
he's a creator, right, And like he said, sure, there's
many many layers that I find incredibly frustrating in that

(07:06):
kind of discussion that I think is connected to the
fact that he he tried all of these different things
and came up with a really important invention that kind
of makes it seem like a romantic ideal rather than Yeah,
a disaster financially for his family that went on for years. Yeah,

(07:29):
and often when he had options that could have saved
them and kept himself afloat, he turned them down. That's
the thing that I always get. I do want to
end this on a more fun note, though, Okay, because
there was no is the sneakers are probably still coming
because you know, I love me some shoes. There is

(07:51):
a fun part in my opinion of his obsessive inventiveness,
which is, okay, you know, it all started for him
his pursuit of perfecting rubber because he had bought a
life preserver and it needed some tweaking to really work

(08:12):
as well as it could. I found myself in that
moment wondering, why is this man buying a life preserver
like he didn't that he have a boat. He's literally
like already struggling financially, I never saw anything about a boat,
but he really wanted a life preserver. And then there's
a portion of his book where he talks about how
important life preservers are, Like I don't know if he

(08:34):
had a formative experience that made him afraid of the
water or afraid of drowning, but he had this vision
of really like creating just literal boatloads of safety equipment
for ships. He thought, not only should they all have
like the latest and greatest life preservers at all times,

(08:56):
he thought that even like furnish should have like recessed
pockets where inflatable things would pop out of and you
can inflate them, and people could like use a table
as a life preserver essentially, if you know, they had
these rubber balloons that would come out and that they
can inflate. Like every piece of furniture should also have

(09:18):
this dual function of being potentially like a not just
a like oh I can float on this piece of wood,
but like a custom made form of life preserver functionality,
which is actually pretty fascinating to me. But nobody really
got as excited about that as was the case many

(09:39):
times with them. But I can't imagine if you're around
somebody who keeps going I have a great idea and
they keep kind of messing up, or like they don't.
They have the idea, they've developed it, and then they
don't like get it to the finish line because they're
busy with another idea. We don't like to diagnose, but
I do recognize game recognizes game. There may have been

(09:59):
some MEDHD in that mix, but like how people would
be like mm hm cool Charles, Yeah, everything's a life
preserver yep, yep, yep. Like I could see why he
didn't get a lot of buy in from the people
a wrapt But from a creativity standpoint, I think those
are kind of fascinating ideas. Yeah, I'm talking about one

(10:28):
of my favorite things this week. It was HeSE shoes. Listen,
I love the shoes. We all we all know. It's
not a secret. I did want to mention for people
that are interested in the more modern stuff that I
said we were not getting into, Like we kind of
took any of the modern companies up to basically the

(10:50):
point where they kind of became really established, and then
we left off. But there is a great series of
books called All Gone that started in two thousand and
six by Michael Dupoi, and it basically, you know, catalogs
like limited edition sneakers and stuff, and you can watch
like the way different designs get you know, these short

(11:14):
burst runs or like collaborations, et cetera. And I just
love it. To me, that's a really interesting way to
look at like the way fashion is evolving in relation
to shoes. Love it, love it, love it. I just
want to mention that there are a lot out there
as well, of other books about modern shoe culture and
sneaker heads. Here's why I don't consider myself a sneakerhead.

(11:38):
I love sneakers, I don't have Holy Grail shoes. Generally,
I'm more like, oh my god, this came out and
I'm in love with it. I'll buy it, but I
don't collect in any kind of ordered manner, and I
wear mine, which I know a lot of people don't.
There was a thing, gosh, I'm really like the memory
banks just kind of spat this one out just now.

(12:00):
I remember seeing, you know, one of those viral videos
of a guy proposing to his beloved courtside at a
basketball game, and when he got down on one need
there were a lot of people in the comments going,
oh my gosh, he's going to crease those Jordans, and
I was like, yeah, because they're sneakers are supposed to
wear them. But I know for a lot of people

(12:21):
that is the end of their value. Yeah, and I'm
not like that, which is why I don't think of
myself as being part of that culture. It's like the
never removed from box dolls. I have some of those,
but my thing is not about their value. It's that
usually the way they are put in the box for
merchandizing purposes looks prettier than anything that's going to happen

(12:44):
once I get it out. Oh sure, because a lot
of times box design is also its own art. So
I do have a lot of toys that are still
in their boxes, but it's usually for that reason or
I'm like scared a cat will bite it if it
has very appealing looking for something. But yeah, that's why
I can't. I can't ever be in it. I just

(13:04):
want fun shoes, and I like, yeah, I'd love having
shoes custom printed when I can. There are a lot
of services that do that. Now it's a problem. I'm
just saying I love shoes I'm going to reference several
things that you're not gonna remember, but please come with
me on this journey. Okay, I'll try one, and it's
going to keep happening because, as you said, there's a

(13:29):
guarantee that we'll have Samuel Plimsol talk coming up soon.
But the whole time I was working on this, I
could not get the song a million miles away out
of my head. Do you remember this song? I would
probably recognize that if I heard it, but I'm it's
throwing it to mind the early nineteen eighties. It's from
a band called the plim Soles Okay p L I

(13:50):
ms so u L. Although they pulled that name from
the shoe and they were very popular in the early
nineteen eighties' la scene. But they were in the movie
Valley Girl that came out in nineteen eighty three starring
Nicholas Cage. They actually performed like in the club in
that movie, and I that song is emblazoned on my

(14:11):
memory forever. So every time Samuel Plimsel's name comes up,
it just starts with your singing funny, just starts it again,
and it's a good song. So I'm had for it.
There's no problem. That's no problem the other And if
anybody else knows about this one, I feel like I
keep referencing things I saw in magazines growing up that
I am like, where did this go? There was a

(14:34):
time and I first saw it in a magazine where
Vans was doing this program where if you sent them
a yard of fabric and like money, they would make
you a custom pair of shoes with it. WHOA. And
I was obsessed with this concept, and I saved up money,
and I saved up money and I saved up money,
and when I had enough money, the program had ended,

(14:54):
and I was like, Oh, the saddest sad of sad town.
That is how bad, Which is probably why I I
am so obsessed with designing shoe prints today and getting
them printed because I love that biz. I love a
custom shoe. Oh, I love a custom shoe. I will
customize them myself if I have to just shoes anyway,

(15:15):
the Van's mail in the dream. I want to know
if anybody did that, how it came out, if they
still have those shoes, I hope they do. Like I
just think that's a fraught concept. And I first saw
it in a magazine like you know, one of those
like fashion and lifestyle magazines for like teens and young women. Sure,

(15:36):
I don't remember which one, but I sure do remember
seeing it and going yeah, because I want it all
part of it. I can't type the word tennis without
typing tennish it. I tried to catch them all. I
did not in this episode, as you no doubt noticed.
I just could not do it. I only noticed because

(15:59):
it's it tripped you up. It didn't trip me up. Oh,
it's tish tennish. One of the other things that came
up a lot in research, particularly when I was trying
to identify as much information as I could about sand shoes,

(16:20):
and I was looking at old newspapers, story after story.
At first I thought they were all talking about the
same story. No, it kept happening. Theft of sand shoes.
Apparently this was a real problem in the eighteen eighties
and nineties, where people would go to the beach and
they wouldn't like they weren't like aqua shoes where you

(16:40):
might wear them right into the water. It seemed like
people would leave their shoes on the beach and then
go into the water, and little hoodlums would come and
steal those shoes, and there was just notice after notice
of like so and so sandish sand shoes were stolen
from this beach. At this time, investigators are on it,
and I'm just like, oh, my lord, can you imagine

(17:03):
being the detective who gets another theft of They're just
like time to your wrist or something. Guys. This is
I have other stuff. The Dassler Brothers, that whole story
is a lot. There are a lot of books written
about it. There are a lot of news pieces written
about it because it really changed their town where they

(17:27):
grew up, because they kind of divided the town. There
was one article I was reading, and I don't remember
which one it was, but it is in our sources
that was about how like for a lot of people,
it was like, are you an Adidas person or are
you a Pumas person? Where do your parents work? Which
factory do they work at? What are you like? That's

(17:48):
all you would be wearing? There was no crossover. It
was very wild. The whole wild thing with the war
is really fascinating because apparently, and don't anybody quote me
on this, because I did a very fast read because
I wasn't getting deep into all of this. Apparently Rudy,
who had been called up in nineteen forty three, deserted

(18:11):
in nineteen forty five. Woh, and he was captured and
was imprisoned for this, and he always blamed his brother,
saying that his brother had turned him in. Oh but again,
a lot of this is kind of like pieced together,
and we don't know the accuracy of it either. Apparently. Also,

(18:32):
their two wives really did not get along, and they
had continued to live in the family house with their
parents and their new wives and families, so it was
just like a bunch of people getting angrier and angrier
at each other for a while, and this once they
split in eighteen forty eight, it was a complete severing

(18:53):
of their relationship, to the point that when those two
men died many years later, they were buried on opposite
sides of the cemetery, so they wouldn't even be close
to each other, and the families would not see each
other if they happened to visit at the same time.
That's a feud. That's a yeah, that's a feud. I

(19:24):
mentioned at the top of the episode that you know,
their ethics issues to consider when buying things, and it's
something I think about a lot because I am a listen,
I'm a consumer in my soul. I love stuff. It's
not even it's not even like a thing where I
need the stuff. I just want one. I want to

(19:45):
support the creation of beautiful things, and two like I
just they're magical little things. I love them. But it
is harder, you know, when you realize how dicey these
some practices are. You have to start looking really really
closely at them, and it becomes a little bit weird.

(20:08):
So I just encourage everyone to do as as much
digging as you can on how companies run. Like I said,
there are still opaque parts of the supply chain though
it's hard as a consumer to get the whole picture.
But more and more watchdog groups are always trying more,
and our companies do seem to be trying, but there's
always that level of suspicion of like, are you really
disclosing everything? But sure, anyway, trying to be an ethical

(20:30):
consumer is its own job in many ways. I do
also want to reference something else that I loved and
is gone but lives on in a weird way. Going
back to that custom shoe thing, there was a company
briefly named custom Attics, and Customatics was magical because they
it was started. I forget what companies they worked for.

(20:52):
It was started by a couple two or three guys
that had worked for some of the big sneaker manufacturers
and had kind of all felt like they hit the
ceiling and they wanted to do something new for themselves,
and they basically put together this site where you could
kind of design your own shoes and like they would
have a model, but they had a very wide range

(21:13):
of like finishes you could pick. They had a wide
range of shoes, like I have some very cute silver
boots that I got from them. Still, I got a
lot of sneakers from them. They did like skate shoes.
They did all the stuff, and then you could do
additional things like have various embroidered motifs on it. Like
I just it was a terrific, terrific site, and they

(21:35):
also were very much in the hey, the shoe industry
needs to change. They were very forthcoming about here is
the factory that we're using, here's what we did to
set it up. Here's how we're trying to compete with
other factories in the area and make sure that like
our employees are getting better treatment. Again, I want to say,
it's not like I'm boots on the ground. I'm going

(21:56):
by what they said, so there's always possibility. But what's
interesting is that they eventually had to shudder. However, Converse,
which is now owned by Nike, bought their customization software.
So if you go to the Converse site now and
you build yourself a pair of Chucks, you're essentially using
the software and the whole back end that they built.

(22:19):
And this was years ago. This was in the late nineties.
I think that they were making this maybe early two thousands,
but it's the function is still very similar to how
it was on those old customatics. Anyway, sneaker people, rise up.
I live I live for it. I live for it.

(22:41):
I'm sorry to bore you a shoe talk talk shit talk.
I just love it. I love seeing I love seeing design.
I also have that problem. I think we've talked about
this on the show before. I don't like having the
same stuff as other people. Yeah, I just don't. It's
fine if you do, but I never have since I

(23:02):
was very small, which is why I started making my
own clothes, which is why there's a workshop. I want
to go to where you make your own sneakers. Yeah,
I just need to little rally a couple of people
to go with me so we can all have like
a sneaker getaway. But then they're going to be like, wow,
you're weird about this, So we'll see what the success

(23:22):
level is. There are also kids you can do, and
I might. I might invest in one or two of
those because the problem is that I'm going to want
to make two bazillion pair and I have, as you mentioned,
a lot of shoes. How many I don't know. We
don't do that kind of reckoning in our house. Once
it passes a certain threshold. I'm like, like the rugaroo,
I can't count past a certain number and I refuse

(23:44):
to do it. I won't do it the number is
more than thirteen. But yeah, I don't know the numbreak. Yeah,
now I'm thinking about what shoes I'm going to pack
for an upcoming trip. Anyway, Do you have any other
thoughts on shoes? No, you're like, no, you I tapped
out it did the ee. I do not have the

(24:08):
same love for shoes, and I also have wide toes
in a narrow heel, and I have a hard time
finding shoes that fit me well, because at the stage
of my life, I am unwilling to cram my toes
into shoes that do not have enough room for them

(24:29):
me either, So I tend to find a shoe that
I like, that fits me well, that holds up to
the long distances that I like to walk around, and
then I will buy that is just the shoe that
I will buy uever until they change the last, until
they change the last, and then I will I will
walk in them until either the internal support breaks down

(24:53):
or until the soles are worn out, and then I
will put them in the shoe recycling thing and get
a new one. Usually, if mine start to get to
the point where they're breaking down, with a few exceptions,
they kind of get semi retired where they're on the
shelf and I love them and they might come out
for like a brunch once in a while. Yeah, they

(25:15):
don't stay in regular use after that point in time,
but you never know. You never know, and I do.
I have a lot of the pandemic caused this little
problem with both shoes and clothes, which is leading up
to when the pandemic started, I was traveling a lot
for work, we were doing some more live shows. I

(25:39):
was bolstering up my wardrobe of like nice shoes, heels,
and like cute suits and stuff that I would wear
for things like that. And now I still have them all,
but I don't have many occasions to wear them, right,
But I don't. I don't know where I would ever
want to put them. Yeah, I mean I know I

(26:00):
know where they're going when I'm gone, which is that
I have a person who will receive them all, who
wears my same size, and who I love very dearly,
and who knows that this is her legacy. So she's
going to get all the shoes. Yeah. But yeah, I
do have a lot that I just love, and some
of them are at this point I kind of go
in and visit and say I love you. I'm sorry

(26:21):
I haven't warn you. In a minute. Yeah, you'll have
your day again at some point, I promise. Insummation shoes, love, love, love,
Sorry if anyone finds that superficial, but to me, they
are marvels of design and architecture and engineering. Yeah. I

(26:43):
often see you when I see you in person, and
you will have great shoes on, and I admire the
great shoes that you have on. I just do not
put that kind of effort into my own shoes. There's
nothing better than a good shoe. Another thing about a
shoe is it as an investment as part of your wardrobe.

(27:04):
For the most part, you can retain their use longer
than like a pair of clothes. Right, you gain fifteen pounds,
your pants might not fit, but your shoes are probably
still gonna fit. And so like, they just don't suffer
the same sort of danger of investment as other wardrobe
pieces might. So they're great cute, and then they're hello,

(27:26):
kitty shoes, and then you gotta have your Star Wars shoes.
It's a company called Posu I was in love with
for a while that was making Star Wars shoes. I'll
tell this story and then I swear we're out. They
had made this very cute boot that when The Force
Awakens was being made. Their wardrobe group, whether I don't

(27:46):
know if it was a costume designer or someone else,
found this boot and used it. And it's the boots
that Ray wears in that movie and subsequent films. And
so then they entered into a deal with Lucasfilm to
produce those as like Ray boot and then they started
making these amazing like high tops and like low tops
and their whole thing. The reason I really fell in

(28:06):
love with them other than they were Star Wars shoes,
which I love, is that they were really based, like
entirely in sustainable shoemaking, and it was the first brand
that I knew that was really doing that. Like they
would literally have tons of information on their site about
how they made their bouncy souls, like their insuls from
coconut fiber, and how like the way that they ran

(28:30):
the rubber plantations and how they made sure that you know,
no one was exploited and everything was sustainable. And I
loved them for that reason. And then they had some
financial problems. They got bought out by some of the employees,
and I think they may have shut down because they
never quite got the same lineup going. But they were amazing,

(28:55):
and if you find any poseus on the secondary market,
highly recommend because they're great and you know they were
made with care. Okay, now I'm done for the moment
until we talked about Samuel Plimsel, But we won't talk
about shoes that day, I promise. If this is your
weekend coming up, listen. I hope you are the cutest

(29:16):
shoes to brunch. If you do that, I hope wherever
you go you wear whatever shoes make you feel the happiest.
If they're not cute, but they're so comfortable, they just
make you feel at ease. Those are the right shoes
whatever it takes to make you have the best weekend possible.
If you are working, I hope your shoes are so
comfortable they feel like walking on clouds that hug your
feet with just the right amount of bounced support. If

(29:39):
you are not working, I still hope your feet are
comfortable and that you are kind to them and you
take care of your feet because they're holding you up
and we need you. We are going to be back
here on Monday with a brand new episode. We will
also be back here tomorrow with a classic Stuff you

(30:01):
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