This is an opinion cartoon.

This Father’s Day tribute was first published in 2011. It’s been 10 years since he passed.

I was about five the first time I spit into a tin of Kiwi shoe polish. Cordovan, most likely.

On Saturday nights, I was the family shoeshine boy. I earned the duty of lining up the family footwear for a scrubbing of polish and a rubdown. I always saved Pop’s shoes for last … showtime.

My dad, James H. Crowe, was a Primitive Baptist preacher. He usually wore his brown wingtips to church. Cordovan shoe polish gave ‘em a reddish shine as if they’d been lacquered by the devil himself — with the right amount of preacher’s boy spit.

One of Dad’s size 12′s swallowed half my left arm as I held it up, buffing its hide with a deliberate right hand while the other shoe waited its turn. From above, me shining my dad’s shoes probably looked like a boy wrestling a couple of docile alligators.

To this day, the smell of leather and shoe polish is like a post card from home and that quiet, strange little boy who grew up in rural Kentucky.

Even then I wondered, “Will I ever be man enough to fill such shoes?”

I still wonder.

I love this photo, taken by my nephew Brett Benton.

Feeding the cows: One Sunday morning, the congregation consisted of only two elderly ladies. Dad studied the situation, then led off his sermon by comparing the delivery of the Lord’s word to farming. “If I go to feed the cows and only two show up, I’m not gonna hold out,” he said, “I’m gonna feed the ones who came to be fed.” He then proceeded to deliver the Lord’s message in full to the attentive sisters.

After the service, the ladies had a word with the preacher. “Brother Crowe, we so enjoyed your sermon today. But you didn’t have to call us a couple of cows.”

Dad’s ‘F-word’: The only times Dad ever said anything resembling a cuss word, he was in the pulpit quoting scripture from the Bible. Outside of church, he spelled out the hot place where Satan dwells as “h-e-double toothpicks.” But he had a couple fake cuss words he used on those rare occasions when he was mad or in sudden, surprising pain. One was “Shoot-fire.” The other was an F-word. I heard him say this whenever he smashed his thumb with a hammer and that one time I convinced him to let me show him my fastball. I was about 12, and he took a glove and squatted into the catcher’s position in the front yard. I reared back and threw the baseball as hard as I could — it went low, hit his foot and shot straight at the pickup truck, cracking its windshield. He threw the mitt down, hopped around and shouted “Foot-to-it!”

You walked the walk, Dad. Thanks for giving me the honor to shine your big ol’ shoes. Foot-to-it, you were the best guy I’ve ever known. I miss you every day.

Happy Father’s Day.

Hug ‘em if you got ‘em.

True stories and stuff by JD Crowe

How I met Dr. Seuss

Robert Plant head-butted me. Thanks, David Coverdale

I was ZZ Top’s drummer for a night and got kidnapped by groupies

Check out more cartoons and stuff by JD Crowe

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].

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