A BROTHER’S LOVE

By Carol A. Cole

While most young boys wanted a Roy Rogers cap gun or a Lionel train set, my older brother, Jim, asked for and received a shoe-shine kit for Christmas, 1952.  The kit came in a blue wooden box with a hinged lid.  There were two round tins of polish, two stiff bristled brushes, and a long cloth.  There was a wooden platform on the lid, shaped like the bottom of a man’s shoe.  The customer would place his shoe on the platform and Jim would swirl the round brush in the appropriate color polish and smooth it onto the leather.  This would be followed by buffing the polish with one of the two brushes.  He would finish with a brisk rubbing with the shoe-shine cloth until the customer’s shoe gleamed.  Jim would then repeat the process for the other shoe.

     Jim would ask my father to drive him into the small town of Bellmore, New York on Saturday afternoons.  He set up shop outside the small news store across from the Long Island Rail Road station.  Huddled in his winter coat, my brother would shine shoes for several hours, earning the princely sum of ten cents per customer.  When asked what he was going to buy with his earnings, he solemnly replied, “A baby doll for my little sister.”  I was two and a half years old and had been recently diagnosed with kidney disease.  I was scheduled for surgery in mid January and Jim wanted to do something special for his little sister. 

     Jim was not quite eight when he began shining shoes.  He slowly amassed the seven dollars that the local five-and-dime was charging, for the doll he wanted to buy.  The doll had a soft cloth body with rubber arms and legs.  She had a china head with eyes that opened and closed.  Once again, my father drove Jim into town and he proudly placed his money on the counter.  He asked that the doll be gift-wrapped and carried it on his lap for the ride back home.

     My mother always delighted in telling me how incensed Jim was the morning of my surgery, because it was Dwight Eisenhower’s first inauguration and, “How can they have his inauguration when my sister is in the hospital?”  She patiently explained that some things have to go on regardless of our family’s problems.

     When I came home from the hospital the next week, Jim was waiting with the gaily wrapped box.  He helped me unwrap the doll and was thrilled when I clutched her tightly.  I later named her Julieann after my mother and she quickly became my favorite doll.

     Several years later, when I had to have a kidney removed, Julieann also had surgery.   I took a pair of scissors to her soft body after using a red crayon to give her an operation scar and cut her open, just as I had been.  My mother helped me sew her up and we both healed quite nicely.

     Jim and I are now in our fifties but I still remember my favorite doll and the love of an older brother who so unselfishly labored for his little sister’s happiness.

THE END

This is a true story published in Good Old Days Specials Magazine January 2005