Shoe Dog (15 page)

I got into the habit every night of phoning my father from my recliner. He'd always be in his recliner, too, and together, recliner to recliner, we'd hash out the latest threat confronting Blue Ribbon. He no longer saw my business as a waste of my time, apparently. Though he didn't say so explicitly, he did seem to find the problems I faced “interesting,” and “challenging,” which amounted to the same thing.

IN THE SPRING
of 1969 Penny began to complain of feeling poorly in the mornings. Food didn't sit well. By midday she was often a little wobbly around the office. She went to the doctor—the same doctor who'd delivered her—and discovered she was pregnant.

We were both overjoyed. But we also faced a whole new learning curve.

Our cozy apartment was now completely inappropriate. We'd have to buy a house, of course. But could we afford a house? I'd
just
started to pay myself a salary. And in which part of town should we buy? Where were the best schools? And how was I supposed to research real estate prices and schools, plus all the other things that go into buying a house, while running a start-up company? Was it even feasible to run a start-up company while starting a family? Should I go back to accounting, or teaching, or something more stable?

Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.

WE FOUND A
house in Beaverton. Small, only sixteen hundred square feet, but it had an acre of land around it, and a little horse corral, and a pool. There was also a huge pine tree in the front and a Japanese bamboo out back. I loved it. More, I recognized it. When I was growing up my sisters asked me several times what my dream house would look like, and one day they handed me a charcoal pencil and a pad and made me draw it. After Penny and I moved in, my sisters dug out the old charcoal sketch. It was an exact picture of the Beaverton house.

The price was thirty-four thousand dollars, and I popped my shirt buttons to discover that I had 20 percent of that in savings. On the other hand, I'd pledged those savings against my many loans at First National. So I went down to talk to Harry White. I need the savings for a down payment on a house, I said—but I'll pledge the house.

“Okay,” he said. “On this one we don't have to consult Wallace.”

That night I told Penny that if Blue Ribbon failed we'd lose the house. She put a hand on her stomach and sat down. This was the kind of
insecurity
she'd always vowed to avoid. Okay, she kept saying, okaaaay.

With so much at stake, she felt compelled to keep working for Blue Ribbon, right through her pregnancy. She would sacrifice everything to Blue Ribbon, even her deeply held goal of graduating from college. And when she wasn't physically in the office, she would run a mail order business out of the new house. In 1969 alone, despite morning sickness, swollen ankles, weight gain, and constant fatigue, Penny got out fifteen hundred orders. Some of the orders were nothing more than crude tracings of a human foot, sent in by customers in far-flung places, but Penny didn't care. She dutifully matched the tracing to the correct shoe and filled the order. Every sale counted.

AT THE SAME
time that my family outgrew its home, so did my business. One room beside the Pink Bucket could no longer contain us. Also, Woodell and I were tired of shouting to be heard above that jukebox. So each night after work we'd go out for cheeseburgers, then drive around looking at office space.

Logistically, it was a nightmare. Woodell had to drive, because his wheelchair wouldn't fit in my Cougar, and I always felt guilty and uncomfortable, being chauffeured by a man with so many limitations. I also felt crazed with nerves, because many of the offices we looked at were up a flight of stairs. Or several flights. This meant I'd have to wheel Woodell up and down.

At such moments I was reminded, painfully, of his reality. During a typical workday, Woodell was so positive, so energetic, it was easy to forget. But wheeling him, maneuvering him, upstairs, downstairs, I was repeatedly struck by how delicate, how helpless he could be. I'd pray under my breath.
Please don't let me drop him.
Please don't let
me drop him.
Woodell, hearing me, would tense up, and his tension would make me more nervous. “Relax,” I'd say, “I haven't lost a patient yet—haha!”

No matter what happened, he'd never lose his composure. Even at his most vulnerable, with me balancing him precariously at the top of some dark flight of stairs, he'd never lose touch with his essential philosophy:
Don't you dare feel sorry for me. I'm here to kill you.

(The first time I ever sent him to a trade show, the airline lost his wheelchair. And when they found it, the frame was bent like a pretzel. No problem. In his mutilated chair, Woodell attended the show, ticked off every item on his to-do list, and came home with an ear-to-ear mission-accomplished smile on his face.)

At the end of each night's search for new office space, Woodell and I would always have a big belly laugh about the whole debacle. Most nights we'd wind up at some dive bar, giddy, almost delirious. Before parting we'd often play a game. I'd bring out a stopwatch and we'd see how fast Woodell could fold up his wheelchair and get it and himself into his car. As a former track star, he loved the challenge of a stopwatch, of trying to beat his personal best. (His record was forty-four seconds.) We both cherished those nights, the silliness, the sense of shared mission, and we mutually ranked them among the solid gold memories of our young lives.

Woodell and I were very different, and yet our friendship was based on a selfsame approach to work. Each of us found pleasure, whenever possible, in focusing on one small task. One task, we often said, clears the mind. And each of us recognized that this small task of finding a bigger office meant we were succeeding. We were making a go of this thing called Blue Ribbon, which spoke to a deep desire, in each of us, to win. Or at least not lose.

Though neither of us was much of a talker, we brought out a chatty streak in each other. Those nights we discussed everything, opened up to each other with unusual candor. Woodell told me in detail about his injury. If I was ever tempted to take myself too se
riously, Woodell's story always reminded me that things could be worse. And the way he handled himself was a constant, bracing lesson in the virtue, and value, of good spirits.

His injury wasn't typical, he said. And it wasn't total. He still had some feeling, still had hopes of marrying, having a family. He also had hopes of a cure. He was taking an experimental new drug, which had shown promise in paraplegics. Trouble was, it had a garlicky aroma. Some nights on our office-hunting expeditions Woodell would smell like an old-school pizzeria, and I'd let him hear about it.

I asked Woodell if he was—I hesitated, fearing I had no right—
happy
. He gave it some thought. Yes, he said. He was. He loved his work. He loved Blue Ribbon, though he sometimes cringed at the irony. A man who can't walk peddling shoes.

Not sure what to say to this, I said nothing.

Often Penny and I would have Woodell over to the new house for dinner. He was like family, we loved him, but we also knew we were filling a void in his life, a need for company and domestic comforts. So Penny always wanted to cook something special when Woodell came over, and the most special thing she could think of was Cornish game hen, plus a dessert made from brandy and iced milk—she got the recipe from a magazine—which left us all blotto. Though hens and brandy put a serious dent in her twenty-­five-dollar grocery budget, Penny simply couldn't economize when it came to Woodell. If I told her that Woodell was coming to dinner, she'd reflexively gush: “I'll get some capons and brandy!” It was more than wanting to be hospitable. She was fattening him up. She was nurturing him. Woodell, I think, spoke to her newly activated ­maternal streak.

I struggle to remember. I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. Numberless conversations, breathless laughing fits. Declarations, revelations, confidences. They've all fallen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always sat up half the night, cataloging
the past, mapping out the future. I remember that we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be. How I wish, on just one of those nights, I'd had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal, as I did on my trip around the world.

Still, at least I can always call to mind the image of Woodell, seated at the head of our dinette, carefully dressed in his blue jeans, his trademark V-neck sweater over a white T. And always, on his feet, a pair of Tigers, the rubber soles pristine.

By then he'd grown a long beard, and a bushy mustache, both of which I envied. Heck, it was the sixties, I'd have had a beard down to my chin. But I was constantly needing to go to the bank and ask for money. I couldn't look like a bum when I presented myself to Wallace. A clean shave was one of my few concessions to The Man.

WOODELL AND I
eventually found a promising office, in Tigard, south of downtown Portland. It wasn't a whole office building—we couldn't afford that—but a corner of one floor. The rest was occupied by the Horace Mann Insurance Company. Inviting, almost plush, it was a dramatic step up, and yet I hesitated. There had been a curious logic in our being next door to a honky-tonk. But an insurance company? With carpeted halls and water coolers and men in tailored suits? The atmosphere was so button-down, so corporate. Our surroundings, I felt, had much to do with our spirit, and our spirit was a big part of our success, and I worried how our spirit might change if we were suddenly sharing space with a bunch of Organization Men and automatons.

I took to my recliner, gave it some thought, and decided a corporate vibe might be asymmetrical, contrary to our core beliefs, but it might also be just the thing with our bank. Maybe when Wallace saw our boring, sterile new office space, he'd treat us with respect.
Also, the office was in Tigard. Selling Tigers out of Tigard—maybe it was meant to be.

Then I thought about Woodell. He said he was happy at Blue Ribbon, but he'd mentioned the irony. Maybe it was more than ironic, sending him out to high schools and colleges to sell Tigers out of his car. Maybe it was torture. And maybe it was a poor use of his talents. What suited Woodell best was bringing order to chaos, problem-solving. One small task.

After he and I went together to sign the Tigard lease, I asked him if he'd like to change jobs, become operations manager for Blue Ribbon. No more sales calls. No more schools. Instead he'd be in charge of dealing with all the things for which I didn't have the time and patience. Like talking to Bork in L.A. Or corresponding with Johnson in Wellesley. Or opening a new office in Miami. Or hiring someone to coordinate all the new sales reps and organize their reports. Or approving expense accounts. Best of all, Woodell would have to oversee the person who monitored company bank accounts. Now, if he didn't cash his own paychecks, he'd have to explain the overage to his boss: himself.

Beaming, Woodell said he liked the sound of that very much. He reached out his hand. Deal, he said.

Still had the grip of an athlete.

PENNY WENT TO
the doctor in September 1969. A checkup. The doctor said everything looked fine, but the baby was taking its time. Probably another week, he said.

The rest of that afternoon Penny spent at Blue Ribbon, helping customers. We went home together, ate an early dinner, turned in early. About 4:00 a.m. she jostled me. “I don't feel so good,” she said.

I phoned the doctor and told him to meet us at Emanuel Hospital.

In the weeks before Labor Day I'd made several practice trips to the hospital, and it was a good thing, because now, “game time,” I was
such a wreck that Portland looked to me like Bangkok. Everything was strange, unfamiliar. I drove slowly, to make sure of each turn. Not too slowly, I scolded myself, or you'll have to deliver the baby yourself.

The streets were all empty, the lights were all green. A soft rain was falling. The only sounds in the car were Penny's heavy breaths and the wipers squeaking across the windshield. As I pulled up to the entrance of the emergency room, as I helped Penny into the hospital, she kept saying, “We're probably overreacting, I don't think it's time yet.” Still, she was breathing the way I used to breathe in the final lap.

I remember the nurse taking Penny from me, helping her into a wheelchair, rolling her down a hall. I followed along, trying to help. I had a pregnancy kit I'd packed myself, with a stopwatch, the same one I'd used to time Woodell. I now timed Penny's contractions aloud. “Five . . . four . . . three . . .” She stopped panting and turned to me. Through clenched teeth she said, “Stop . . . doing . . . that.”

A nurse now helped her out of the wheelchair and onto a gurney and rolled her away. I stumbled back down the hall into something the hospital called “The Bullpen,” where expectant fathers were expected to sit and stare into space. I would have been in the delivery room with Penny, but my father had warned me against it. He'd told me that I'd been born bright blue, which scared the daylights out of him, and he therefore cautioned me, “At the decisive moment, be somewhere else.”

I sat in a hard plastic chair, eyes closed, doing shoe work in my mind. After an hour I opened my eyes and saw our doctor standing before me. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He was saying something. That is, his lips were moving. But I couldn't hear.
Life's a joy? Here's a toy? Are you Roy?

He said it again:
It's a boy.

“A—a—boy? Really?”

“Your wife did a superb job,” he was saying, “she did not complain once, and she pushed at all the right times—has she taken many Lamaze classes?”