Today’s question is, “Does Anyone Still Shine Their Shoes?”

(I was going to write on the topic of “Do Women Still Wear Pantyhose?” but my wife warned me off it.)

I still shine my shoes and boots. I don’t think anyone else in the family does, despite the excellent example I set.

I’ve tried to promote shoe shining. Shoeshine kits, those little wooden boxes that store supplies and brushes, and provide a place to step up on for that final buffing, may be had for a song at yard and estate sales. Especially estate sales, which tells you a lot about the demographics here. I buy them these old shoeshine kits and offer them to the children and grandsons, but get no takers.

At least it keeps me in polish. I have enough shoe polish, brushes and mink oil to supply an Army platoon.

Working outdoors as much as I do, I apply mink oil to waterproof my numerous pairs of leather workboots. Mink oil, derived from the abdominal fat of minks, is an ooooold Indian trick to keep leather soft and supple in harsh conditions. It reportedly did the same for the skin of those ooooold Indians.

The fur industry being what it is, or isn’t these days, real mink oil is in short supply. Most products labeled mink oil probably are made from plant and other animal derivatives, including beeswax. I always set my boots by the woodstove first to warm them up so the waxy goop will melt and be absorbed into the leather.

Another product to waterproof and condition leather is neatsfoot oil. My Uncle Sweetland loved to spin a story to gullible young people about the “neat” being a small rodent-like animal, and how it took the rendering of many of their feet to produce the oil. I doubt they had ever heard of neatsfoot oil. Anyway, he had fun trying to sell the fable to them.

“Neat” is an Old English word for cattle. Neatsfoot oil is made from bovine feet, though not the hooves.

I’m not picky about what kinds of polish I use, as you might surmise given that I acquire my supplies at yard sales. Also given that few people see me wearing my workboots around the farm, you might surmise that I don’t really care whether they are polished.

Ah, but there you would be wrong.

Lacing up newly polished boots that invariably makes me smile.

A filmmaker for public television, apparently having nothing more important to do, recently made a documentary called “The Art of the Shine.” She observed that “People walk taller and happier after getting their shoes shined.”

She found that 50 U.S. airports that still have shoeshine stands. Fees range from $5 to $8 for shoes; double that for boots. Who would patronize shoeshine stands? Businessmen, I’m guessing. Men wearing pricey cowboy boots. I’m also guessing they tip excessively, or those shoeshiners would be on welfare.

If you want to learn how to shine shoes, the internet has videos, like it does for everything else. You’ll learn that to get a nice “spit polish,” you don’t actually have to use spit, though there’s no reason you can’t if you want to. I think it makes the task more personal.

I keep my dress shoes nicely polished, despite having fewer opportunities to wear them these days other than infrequent weddings, too many funerals and the occasional public speaking engagement. For the same reason I don’t get to wear my many zany neckties anymore.

People in general don’t dress up now. It’s hard to recall that men once wore suits for air travel. Shining shoes is not extinct, but on a downward trend. Synthetic materials for footwear can’t be, or don’t need to be, shined. People wear sneakers, plastic Crocs, even slippers out in public.

I’m a shoeshine dinosaur.

Mr. Thomas Salvati, principal of Oak Glen High School in my days there, once advised me, “When you have a moment with nothing to do, use that time to polish your shoes.”

I saw him at the post office in Pughtown a couple of days ago. He looked great, and we both laughed about the shoeshine advice.

But I didn’t look at his shoes, nor he at mine.

(Fred Miller’s third book of stories, “A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave.” is $10 and available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank’s Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)