I don't work at a sawmill, I work on the internet - and that's a good thing. I spent a single highschool summer building a barn with our hometown handyman and when fall arrived my hands froze to the hammer. I decided I needed a way to never do that again and trucked off to take the SATs. Now I live in Minneapolis and can work from my couch if I so desire (and often do) but the north woods still follow me. When I finish my coffee and pack up my laptop, I want to put on boots that feel like armor. I didn't have Redwings as a kid - too expensive for growing feet, but my uncles did, and my dad did, and they had the saddle-soap beat-to-hell dignity of Butch Cassidy.
I bought my first pair of Redwings after college, on the way back north for deer hunting season. An apology - for leaving, for working a job that didn't make sense in Aitkin, for gentrifying and becoming a city kid. I had always spent too much time on the computer, and unnecessary guilt runs deep for the Engers. The boots were a hit, my brother falling so in love with the rich leather and rivets he bought himself a pair soon after. My uncle leaned into his coffee and told me his pair had lasted 12 years.
I've got a veritable collection now, three pairs of Redwings - so sturdy I can barely bring myself to buy shoes that won't carry me through a decade. They're starting to show their age, scars are buffed down and creases worn in. I asked my Angie's dad if I could marry his daughter in one pair. I cleared drains after last summer's flood in another. They're starting to smell like saddle soap.
