This morning, I heard the Sports Illustrated legend - Frank Deford - on "Morning Edition." Deford offers a weekly meditation on sport. Today, he took me back in time:
Commentator Frank Deford waxed poetic about the rise and fall and rise again of that great American sneaker: the Converse Chuck Taylor canvas hi-top. Chuck Taylor (1901 - 1969) was a Converse Shoe Co. traveling salesman whose name came to grace the classic, high-top canvas basketball sneakers known as “Chucks.” Over 500 million pairs of Chuck Taylor All-Stars have been sold since 1917; Taylor also ran clinics worldwide and edited Converse Basketball Yearbook (1922-68).
Deford likened the experience of adolescent boys in the 1950s when they got their first pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars as akin the adolescent girl's first brassiere. Close. I remember that I admired Connies (I never heard them called "Chucks.") as worn by the cool guys in my 7th-grade gym class. I didn't get a pair until I was in 8th grade. I wore them until I got to high school. My high school coach outfitted in shoes that I never saw before or since. They had no red trim separating the canvas from the rubber. The high school shoes had no blue stripe running from one side of the toecap to the other. Chuck Taylor All-Stars had a color patch on the outside ankle and a blue patch on the heel. My high school shoes were plain-vanilla white. When I went to college, it was back to the Chuck Taylor All-Stars.
While I was in college, the Boston Celtics of the NBA were the greatest basketball team of the 1960s: Bill Russell, KC Jones, Bob Cousey, Tom Heinsohn, and the most amazing John Havlicek. The Celts of the 1960s wore black, lowcut Converse All-Stars. That did it. Black, lowcut All-Stars or nothing. An old high school opponent - Joe Gibbons of South (Denver) High School - explained the mystical difference between white All-Stars and black All-Stars. White All-Stars are for speed; Black All-Stars are for traction. I never forgot that wisdom. White for speed; black for traction. Frank Deford isn't so smart, even if he is a Princetonian.
