“Gosh, Galoshes!”

So, there I was the other day, minding my own business as I usually do, when all of a sudden I heard someone exclaim, “Gosh, galoshes!” I turned around to find a large, dark woman in a red and white striped dress and blue raincoat. She carried an orange umbrella and wore gobs of makeup with lashes like Kim Kardashian’s. It had been raining, so she also sported rain boots–yellow–that could have been quite fashionable with any other wardrobe. The entire outfit served as a visual alarm that told me to keep walking, not make eye contact, and pass on the right, which you’re not supposed to do on the freeway but is perfectly acceptable on a sidewalk.

The woman’s outfit was designed not only to engage people but to grab them by the collar and shake them. I did not want to be shaken, but I was curious. Language and words are important to me. I hadn’t heard the word “galoshes” in years and wondered how it came to be used now. It was an anachronism like my uncle’s use of “dear” to describe things he considered too expensive or my referring to something meant to be funny but failing as a “riot.”

I slowed my pace and tuned into the conversation going on between the woman and a father and child who stood under the awning of a coffee shop waiting for the rain to let up. I couldn’t tell who wore the galoshes, but it could have been either one. I pictured the father in black, slip-on galoshes, the kind I was most familiar with as a kid but had already begun to lose popularity in the sixties. The child might have worn a modern version, maybe yellow with sparkly characters from Frozen.

It must have been the child, since I could hear the woman go on about how you could stomp through puddles with galoshes and not get wet and that’s why they were the most wonderful thing in the world. I thought it over and agreed, although I wasn’t about to go stomping through puddles. In fact, I had just skirted a pool of water at a clogged intersection a block before the coffee shop.

“Galosh” seems to be hanging on in the English lexicon. Like the Borg, English absorbs everything it encounters but is quick to reject words and phrases of no immediate relevance. That’s why it’s the perfect language of money. That a word like “galosh” is still used despite its decline in popularity is a testament not only to its practicality but its musicality. After all, who wouldn’t want to say “galoshes” if given the chance? It’s certainly better than its synonyms like “rubbers,” “gumshoes,” and “overshoes.” What native English speaker would say “overshoes”? I have to admit, though, that I would use the German Überschuh because it has “uber” in it and just to show off.

So, how did it happen that this woman in the colorful outfit clearly and courageously used the word “galoshes” in public? She did not look old. Nor did she have an Eastern accent, which is where I see the word originating. I don’t know if that’s correct, but I associate “galoshes” with storm doors, sledding, scarves, old men, cigars, and barber shops. And I place all of those in the New York metro area. I do that for obvious reasons, recognizing that other places do exist. I just can’t put “galoshes” and Malibu in the same sentence. Maybe that’s me.

I can tell you that a pair of galoshes would have come in handy the day I raced down Arthur Avenue in the Bronx from the Fordham University campus at Rose Hill to my apartment in the pouring, summer rain. It took me a week to dry out my shoes (see My Bostonians). So, this is not just an academic exercise, especially when it comes to menswear. I have skin in the game as they like to say in business school.

Finally, that the woman said “gosh” with galoshes has me convinced that she really was an angel. Even with all her eccentricity, she brought together sweetness, simplicity, and symbols from the past in such a way as to make me stop and take notice. But what does that change? you ask. I’m not sure, but I might engage more in the future, be more open, maybe even jump into a puddle or two. Now, wouldn’t that be a riot.

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Image credits: feature by Zach Reiner; galoshes by Peregrinus, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=461654; advertisement by Youth’s companion, http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?825460, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11418082. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”