Left, Right, Left, Right...

I can't really claimed to have dined out on this story, but I have told in contexts it made sense to tell it in. I don't know why these things occur to me, but this time it was probably driven by looking for socks. Socks are connected to feet, and feet are connected to shoes, so there you are.

It was a loooong time ago when I read a piece in the Sunday NYT magazine by the reporter Anthony DePalma. If you're adventurous, you can explore some of his pieces about the docks through the following link.

Whichever one it was, the piece contained a story about his father who was a longshoreman on the Jersey side, I believe. He describes his father as completely legit, and not in any way under the thumb of organized crime, or even sympathetic. He remembers his father telling him that after a day of stacking cargo out of ship's hold you knew you had done an honest day's work.

Anthony gives a tale from his father's days on the docks that pre-dated containerized cargo, the era depicted in the movie 'On the Waterfront.' Goods are moved by winch and hand, and pilferage is rampant.

The story goes that one Italian shoe manufacturer was completely fed up with the shrinkage of his shipments. So fed up that in one shipment he shipped only the left shoes.

Two weeks later he shipped the right ones.

http://www.onoffframp.blogspot.com