Golly, galoshes!
We’ve had a great week surrounded by snow, sun shining on it yesterday probably making a messy flood away.
But the oddest part of sudden weather changes is the way memories are triggered by these rare events. Like when it rains a lot. Southlanders remember our hundred year floods as Wellingtonians among others recall the horror of the Wahine disaster.
Behind me in a shop queue an elderly man suddenly said you don’t see many people wearing galoshes nowadays
No you don’t, and a good thing too, I thought, remembering the funny rubber overshoes people once wore to protect their shoes as well as the floor indoors on which they would walk.
I guess streets were perceived as being wetter then or more puddley, and fewer people travelled by car.
Advertisements in century old newspapers show these galoshes sold in different sizes to accommodate all sorts of footwear including a range to go over highheeled shoes for women, a sort of sling back style to cover the front piece of the shoe leaving the high heel out in the cold as it were.
People took these things off at the door at home or work or wherever and reclaimed them when leaving later.
In the advertisement pictures, galoshes, they look a proper sight.
Doubtless they’d have the stink of all that rubber footwear mercifully being replaced today by other fabrics, materials like drytex developed to be as effective.
But it is only by looking back that you see many of the changes.
Like once police officers wore collar and tie shirts and perhaps the top brass still do.
But most have open-necked shirts cut like those of the All Blacks so that a tie is neither needed nor missed.
Years ago police officers like most men wore really long overcoats whereas today jackets do, perhaps because most travel by car and don’t want the extra bulk.
Overall we seem to wear less clothing now, fewer layers at least and not so many add-ons.
It is not that long ago that women wore hats and gloves always, as did many men, and school uniforms included ties and blazers, jackets and raincoats, hats and for girls, gloves too.
Schoolchildren dress more casually, as we do. But parents may find it no less expensive.