Opinion: Shoes of a different color

Originally published Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2012.

When I was a little kid and mom was teaching me colors, they were known as red, blue, yellow and variations thereof. I was taught yellow and blue mixed together resulted in green. If you mixed red and blue, you would get purple, and so on.

Never did she point to an off-brown shade of Crayola and say, “that’s bourbon.”

But maybe today she would have.

The Allen Edmonds Shoe Company has introduced a new shoe, the color of which is “bourbon.”

The color resembles the whiskey, so it makes you wonder. Did the shoemaker come up with the color and ask a clever marketing person to come up with a name for it? Or was the shoemaker drinking on the job and staring into his third glass of bourbon when he decided it would make a fine shoe color?

If he had been drinking gin, we may not have been treated to bourbon-colored shoes.

I probably won’t get a pair of them.

I’m a little old-fashioned, and prefer cordovan – another made-up color name.

Cordovan is a “rich shade of burgundy,” according to those who know more about color than I do.

Like bourbon, it also is the shade of an alcoholic beverage.

Its name comes from the Spanish city of Cordoba, where it was first made by the Visigoths in the 600s, according to Wikipedia.

I have a pair of Allen Edmonds cordovan shoes, and they are very nice. I am just about to make the last payment on them. I would get another pair, but Mrs. Doud doesn’t want us to take out another second mortgage on the house at our age.

I seldom wear those shoes.

I don’t want them scuffed up or down at the heels.

I keep them polished, though, just in case I have to go to a funeral, or a wedding or the consecration of a bishop.