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Soul Searching
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Knee-high boots
Ken Grindall
12/01/2003
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Photography by Cordero Studios/corderostudios.com
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Returning overland from Central America in 1987, I stopped in the picturesque
town of Antigua, Guatemala. I had spent five months traveling by train, bus,
taxi, military transport, whatever I could scare up. I once hitched a ride atop
a flatbed cargo of Cuban sugar, gripping the tie-down straps for dear life.
During the rough ride that was sweetened by spilt sugar, I resolved to get
myself a motorcycle as soon as I got back to the States. A friend had a Honda
for sale; I would make him an offer.
Getting off the bus in Antigua was like
exiting a time machine. The cobblestone streets, the ancient buildings and
walls, all testified to the truth of the city’s name. I wandered the streets of
working shops: a carpenter making furniture by hand, a tailor, a cobbler. I
bought a bolt of cloth crafted in a remote Mayan village—soft electric blue with
black and white patterns—and on a whim had the tailor make a dinner jacket out
of the eccentric fabric, which he called sedalana, or silk-wool.
 In the
cobbler’s window, next to dainty women’s pumps, was a pair of motorcycle boots.
I would need gear to ride my motorcycle, and a good pair of boots is a must. My
friend had complained about the muffler on his bike being too close to his calf,
and the knee-high boots seemed just what the doctor ordered. I inquired within.
For $35 I had boots custom-made from the softest calfskin leather, cut from a
pattern drawn of my feet as I stood on a piece of cardboard. (Click image to enlarge)
They were
unbelievably comfortable; I could walk miles in them, and did on my journey
north. Crossing the U.S. border on foot, the customs official frowned at the
boots. I told the unfazed border guard of my plans to buy a motorcycle. I was
searched and my papers were photocopied. In the months that followed, the crazy
dinner jacket went missing—a victim of the road—and the motorcycle went
unpurchased in favor of a job offer in Japan.
Still determined to get a
motorcycle and because there was no room to pack them in my already
over-the-limit luggage, I wore the boots on the plane. I dragged my load through
Narita and Ueno station onto a bullet train. I was met at the station by a
beautiful Japanese woman who worked for my new company—I married her eight
months later.
On my first visit to her family farm, she showed me the oldest
building on the property: A squat storehouse called a kura. The door was about a
foot thick, made of hammered iron and inlaid with wattle and daub, covered in
white fireproof plaster. The building, she told me, was built in 1870 just
before the Boshin Civil War (the subject of the film The Last Samurai). She
showed me kimonos from another century that had been carefully stored in
cabinets, perfectly safe in the building that, although musty, felt like winter
inside.
I continued missing opportunities to get a motorcycle, and the next
year I decided to take a break from Japan and return to college with my wife to
give her a year in America. With complete confidence, I left my Guatemalan boots
in the Japanese storehouse.
Lured back by a similar job, I returned to Japan
a year later at the beginning of the rainy season. With a motorcycle once again
on my mind, I pulled open the heavy door of the kura to retrieve my boots.
Throwing aside the shed skin of a great snake, I reached for the boots and was
repulsed. They were covered in a creeping gray mildew and rot. The only thing
the building was not good for storing, apparently, was leather. My father-in-law
laughed, “Silk yes, leather no.”
I left them where they were. They are there
now, in the kura in Japan, slowly moldering. What’s the moral of my tale, you
ask? Only this: If you have the perfect pair of motorcycle boots made for you,
make no excuses and take no bribes. Get that motorcycle and ride.
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