I was just sucking up dirt from the living room’s landlord-bought-Home-Depot rug, thinking of the timelessness of this homely activity when I realized what a marvelous, even revolutionary! machine is the portable electric vacuum cleaner. It practically makes possible the wall-to-wall carpet and totally obviates the need for a rug beater…Except among those Eastern cultures where one takes off one’s clogs, or whatever they’re called, upon entering the house...Which thought led me to images of several friends’ heaped and sprawling entryway collections of shoes, boots, slippers, et cetera.
Is there some constellation of behaviors, I wonder, more often engaged in by those who do, as opposed to those who don’t, have a household rule about taking off one’s shoes? What would they include? Separating the recycling from the trash?...insufficiently predictive; we separate our waste but don’t do the shoe thing…Having at least one item of clothing in a Guatemalan design? Maybe.
Which thought probably reveals in an unattractive way my own attitude toward these shoe-eschewers. They’re basically un-American, I think tendentiously. Lacking the pioneer spirit, left-coast-yoga-ish. Obviously new age. Poseurs. No-longer-radical chic...Now I've worked myself up into a state. So I relax...
On the other hand, for the more enlightened it might just be a matter of comfort and cleanliness in one's own home...Of course. That's what it is. It's just that I have an attitude, and now I feel defensive and embarrassed about bringing this whole thing up...One thing, though: the portable electric vacuum cleaner--widely believed invented in 1907 in Chicago by a janitor named James Spangler whose cousin married William Hoover--really is AWESOME.
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