Everything Old Is New Again
NOTES OF HOPE SEPTEMBER 5, 2024
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN
In 1979 Peter Allen wrote this song “Everything Old Is New Again.” The chorus resonates with me today.
Don't throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again
Once upon a time, we used to go to the shoe store where a salesperson would greet us, sit us in a chair, measure our feet – length and width – with that silver & black metal device. He would talk to my mom about what type of shoe we were looking for, disappear into a back room, and return with boxes of shoes for us to try on. I always had to have the black and white “Saddle Oxfords”. Not my choice, but those old shoes are coming back in style as if they were new. They are new again!
Today we usually buy shoes at Kohls, Meijer, Walmart, and even Amazon. However, for that old style shoe buying experience, one simply needs to go to Stout’s Shoes in downtown Indianapolis. There you will be greeted by a shoe salesperson, sit in a chair, have your feet measured, talk about the style you are looking for, and try shoes on from the boxes that salesperson brought you. The service is impeccable. Begun 1886, it is the U.S.’s oldest shoe store and is just one block over from where I live
In 2020 I bought a pair of shoes my podiatrist said I needed to wear, along with a pair of socks. It took me three years to like those shoes, but I fell in love with the socks that the salesperson had sold me. In the laundry, as so often happens, one of those precious socks never returned. Finally, I broke down, walked over to Stout’s, and started looking at socks. A salesperson, Aaron, the same one who helped me in 2020, approached me. I said I wanted the same socks he had sold me four years earlier. He looked up my account, which I did not even know I had, and took me over to a rack that had those exact same socks!! Now that is service.
Some other great things about the downtown Stout’s: they still have the old pulley system that sends boxes of shoes wrapped in string down from upstairs to the old-style cash register. They also still have a crusty, old parrot that talks incessantly. It is an experience that reminds me: “everything old is new again”.
All of this is to say that my old website with the old Notes of Hope is new again. My son, Jason, helped me bring it up to speed, and I have begun writing again. I hope you will subscribe (if I haven’t subscribed you already *smile*). The new website www.hopemoran.com has the old name but new features. I will post Notes of Hope there along with registration information for events I will lead such as Lunch and a Labyrinth, Card Making Parties, Scrapbook Experiences, various retreats I lead, and more. Hopefully you will find it a great site to visit, visit often, and tell your friends to check it out. “Everything old is new again.”