Charlie's Surplus
It was the end of my workday yesterday afternoon, so I decided to walk Lilac at Elm Park but before that drive to FAMILY DOLLAR on West Boylston Street to see if I could return or at least exchange a pair of black sneakers I had bought there two days ago strictly for dog-walking, to stroll around Worcester's soul-soothing Elm Park with my sweet old mutt Lilac. Ever since PAYLESS SHOES went out of business four years ago I've been in orthopedic no-man's land, buying expensive and cheapo walking shoes from store after store, high and low, in an effort to replace the ever more illusive perfect dog walking shoe that used to buy at PAYLESS: a $55 sturdy "pleather" top black clog, with thick pliable sole that always did the trick for my feet. And which I cannot seem to replace. I mean they were perfect for my ride feet and narrow wallet: kitchen dish washer clogs, nurses aides shoes, a janitor's best friend - work shoes made for the working guy or gal who couldn't go to the specialty stores and drop $150 on a pair of new work shoes - that was for their bosses: the nurses, the doctors, the chefs, the building management - but still needed very good shoes. After all, they were on their feet all day, laboring. Pity the worker who does all the dirty work in America and doesn't make enough dough to buy him or herself an excellent pair of $200 work shoes! But for years PAYLESS SHOES filled the gap: the quality of their work shoes was always way better than Walmarts or Targets and they had some cute options.
But not anymore. PAYLESS is out of business. And I haven't found my new go to shoe store yet. This FAMILY DOLLAR sneaker debacle is just that: another disaster. One that cost me $12.99 and was pretty utilitarian looking. But they were comfy when I tried them on in the Family Dollar "shoe aisle." I thought: these shoes may work! They may help me get back into that 30 minute daily stroll with Lilac. We both need to lose pounds. Let's see how it goes. So I bought them, along with a small and large whisk for whipping up meringue.
But once Lilac and I hit the grass and pavement of Elm Park I knew they were sh*t. They hurt. Offered no support and actually left the top of my right foot with a big purplish splotch. My pricey Klem's clogs that I bought for myself when I lived in Spencer (on sale) are excellent work shoes and still beautiful to look at but not up to traipsing around with my Lilac. In the park. On sunny and rainy days.
So I innocently went back to Family Dollar yesterday, walked up to the big, no-nonsense manager lady who brusquely rang up my sneaker purchase two days ago and said to her: These shoes are awful. You can't really walk in them. May I have a refund or at least exchange them for other things? I was holding my FAMILY DOLLAR receipt and the sneakers. She turned at me like we were in a knife fight and in a thick Hispanic accent bellowed: NO! YOU WORE THEM!!! NO EXCHANGE!! NO! HERE IS CORPORATE'S NUMBER IF YOU WANT TO COMPLAIN! And she wrote down the FAMILY DOLLAR headquarters phone number on a slip of cash register paper and shoved it under my nose and walked away in a huff. I watched this lady waddle down the interminable junk food aisle of FAMILY DOLLAR and thought to myself: If there's anyone who could use a good walk ... in good pair of walking shoes.
But I let it go. I'd donate yet another pair of shoes that didn't fit right to somebody and go for a walk with Lilac and get in a good mood again. Lilac was waiting in the backseat of my car, waiting patiently for that end of the day walk with her mistress in Elm Park. Lilac believes Elm Park is teeming with squirrels and little kids who nonchalantly drop their snacks to the ground just for her! Once in the park, me wearing my Klem's clogs, Lilac on her blue leash, I just kind of followed Lilac's lead. She deserved it! So...We circled around trees, Lilac smelling squirrel scent; we ambled around the picnic tables where my dog sniffed around for bits of French fries and chicken skins. I pulled her away from the garbage, and then my dog led me to this huge tombstone in front of a pretty clutch of trees. While Lilac sniffed the dog pee on the base of this big granite square, I read its top, because it was some kind of Worcester marker-monument. They're all over Elm Park - stones and rocks and slabs of stones and special trees commemorating Worcester's special people. The top of this stone had a plaque which read: "THIS MONUMENT REPRESENTS THE FINISH LINE OF THE LEGENDARY CHARLIE'S SURPLUS 10 MILE ROAD RACE HELD IN WORCESTER FOR MANY YEARS. ... CHARLIE'S ROAD RACE ATTRACTED SOME OF THE GREATEST RUNNERS IN THE SPORT'S HISTORY. CHARLIE EPSTEIN WAS A VERY PROUD, BIG HEARTED NATIVE SON."
I looked down at my feet, sans good sneakers, remembing the shitty FAMILY DOLLAR pair sitting in my car and a few tears rolled down my cheeks. Charlie would never have treated me like crap, like the manager at Family Dollar had. He would be smiling and polite and nice. To you. To everybody. I closed my eyes and saw Charlie and his dark, ramshackle CHARLIE'S SURPLUS store on Water Street - in the Green Island/Kelley Square neighborhood of my youth - the sporys shop where my kid sister used to buy her basketball socks. She played on the girls varsity basketball team for her highschool, St. Mary's. I used to walk with her to Charlie's Surplus when she needed to buy new basketball socks for playing on the team (the school provided her basketball uniform - trunks and jerseys). She'd buy a pack, then we'd walk a few yards down to The Broadway for hamburgers and French fries and Cokes in their big vinyl red booths that you slid on because they were huge and plastic and slippery.
I closed my eyes in the middle of Elm Park again and immediately saw Charlie - big and smiling and sitting amid all his bins and cardboard boxes that were lined up one after another and filled with sports gear. Tons of basketball tee shirts, regular cotton tees, long white basketball socks, cotton runner's shorts and sneakers, and rain slickers for running in the rain. Converse hi tops, All Stars, which my sister loved and bought for herself when she had the money. We never chatted with Charlie who sat in the middle of all those sports clothes, though he was always nice to us. Charlie, older, heavy set, sitting in the corner of his dark, sloppy store was busy chatting with all the city's jocks who seemed to flock to Charlie and Charlie's Surplus. Worcester jocks who came in to buy their practice running gear or those extra basketball socks for their kids in junior high or the guys who visited to look at and marvel at the grand old photos or newspaper clippings - records of the famous athletes who graced Charlie's Road Race. Breathtakingly beautiful athletes Charlie knew. This was before road races became a fad. This was about running and sweating - 100%. ... and no one cared how fashionable they looked in their running shorts or how pretty their rain slickers were or how cool their running shoes were.
The guys would all stand around Charlie in his dark shop that looked more foreclosed garage sale than home to the iconic Charlie and they'd gather on a Saturday morning before or after breakfast at the Broadway... to talk sports with the legendary Charlie...to seek his advice... just reminisce ... discuss the greatest ones with a kind of reverence... admire the unflappable ones, the ones like my sister who has so much heart, who never gave up ... Hoop dreams for my kid sister. All in a dump of a joint with about 6 lightbulbs hanging from cords shedding some light on the affair in old Water Street in poor old Green Island. No fancy stores and restaurants like today, the glorified junk shops that have supplanted Charlie's because now we've got the tony Canal District. Charlie's Water Street ran its last race a long time ago.
But I still see that store, stocked with irregular but name brand sports clothing. The basketball socks for my sis - she was skinny but they did the trick, almost came up to her knobby knees with red or yellow or blue color trim at their tops. The socks came three pair to a plastic bag, like underwear, with a big x drawn in the corner to show the buyer that they were "rejects," imperfect to the sports company that sold their perfect iterations in Sears or JC Penny or first line sports stores for much more money. Like Charlie's, my sister and I were seconds, too, growing up poor on Lafayette Street. Being too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. I remember us sticking closely together as we ran - you always ran with my kid sister! - across the crazy-quilt car-jammed Kelley Square to get to Charlie's. There were scores of small mom and pop shops and diners and dairy bars that you could patronize back then - even if you were poor there was a space for you. So, after Charlie's, we might visit this Millbury Street bakery for a brownie or play the pinball machine at Pete's Dairy Bar for a quarter or buy a $1 cute craft kits at White's Five and Ten. Our neighborhood was a grand adventure, and Charlie's Surplus was part of the fun!
I think if a pair of socks didn't fit my sister right, Charlie would have let her exchange them. He treated everybody with a gruff grace. He was the polar opposite of the nasty manager at FAMILY DOLLAR on West Boylston Street! So much has changed in America!
Several years later, after high school, all the treks to and from Charlie's Surplus were over. I was living in Vermont, having dropped out of college. One sister went to Assumption. My jock sister attended North Eastern. While in Vermont I got a birthday present from my mom and kid sister: first a dozen red roses for their Rose, then in an old sturdy cardboard box: six pairs of Charlie's Surplus basketball socks. I think my mother thought: it's cold in Vermont, I better send my daughter some warm Charlie's socks! I opened the plastic bags and took out the crisp white Charlie's basketball socks and laid them out on my maroon sleeping bag. All red trim. I smiled. Ma, a city girl thru and thru, probably has no idea how cold it could get up here in Vermont - she thought the socks would cut it in the middle of a Vermont winter. She was wrong about their ability to withstand snow and ice but she was right about the feelings they would evoke. She didn't say - didn't need to tell me - the socks were from Charlie's and mostly likely purchased by my sister because it was convenient for the family. We never had a car and our poverty kept us locked in day to day survival. So Ma never went shopping for that just perfect gift or went out of her way to shop and shop and look out for that special present her daughters may have pined for. I never played an entire basketball either! But that autumn/winter, living in a hippie commune outside Rutland, Vermont, just 19 years old, searching for answers, trying to figure out WHO I WAS ... an answer came back to me, from the old three decker on Lafayette Street, in the form of white, cotton-poly-blend basketball socks from Charlie's Surplus on Water Street ...