Why I asked my made in America boots whether Trump can deliver…

There are incredibly well constructed. I wouldn’t even be surprised if astronauts much preferred them to clunky moon boots.

When it comes to outdoor products. A frontier man is the toughest customer to satisfy. As when a product fails to meet his expectations, they simply don’t even make the cut – nothing is just as it is to a frontier man. You probably never heard of VG10 before. But the chances are if a frontier man is going to vote with his wallet to buy a field knife….that’s going to be the first question he will ask. Same goes for field wear – only Kevlar thread will do to hold down buttons. Khaki twill linen is good to go as it’s 30 percent stronger than cotton and wicks sweat.

When I look at my field boots it’s hard if impossible not to believe America can be great again — in a word, there over designed. So over designed that providing one has the discipline to care for them diligently – they’re virtually indestructible. Over design means, even if the soles thin out, they can be recrafted and resoled to be used again and again.

Over designing a commercial boot or any product in the age of ubiquitous use and throw and buy again may sound counter intuitive and even come suicidal from a business point of view – but that has always been the one aspect of any product that separates their brand or service in an overcrowded marketplace and sets the philosophy for their entire product range.

For to over design is to go that extra distance such double stitching a boot so that if the thread gives in one area the whole thing doesn’t flop out….and what’s remarkable about made in USA is even done when the customer doesn’t even know why the boot is stitched that way. Or even why the uppers happen to be 1.5 mm thinner than the thick slab of leather that runs the length of the vamp on the boot — it’s not only just an approach, but an attitude and perhaps even a philosophy that creates a rapport of trust between the customer and the firm.

That I feel is the X factor that needs to be reclaimed by American firms. As when they prioritize cost competitiveness before quality and what a product is supposed to do. They also end up diffusing their focus along with blurring their commitment to nourishing that rapport of trust between customer and firm and in the long run – they just become like everyone else: instead of striving to be a badge of self-expression for those at the very top of their craft, as well as inspiring others to be like them.

No! Made in the USA cannot possibly be cheap. A pair of Fort Lewis twelve inch boots either way you cut or splice it will always cost a bomb.

But I for one will settle for nothing less as I said in the very beginning of this blog post – a frontier man is the toughest customer to satisfy and I am definitely a very satisfied and will always continue to buy my boots only from the US of A.

I do wish President Trump the very best and despite my personal reservations and concerns. I do really want America to be great again.

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‘Should it be raining cats and dogs and you happen to be around Bugis. Do consider popping down the National Library at Bugis. Look up this publication called the New York Book Review – it’s a monthly publication with an old school sardonic Punch sort of line pictorial cover – now the first the thing that will probably strike you about this monthly rag is no one ever reads it well not enough at least for it to appear dog eared or even soggy enough to suggest that anyone would be interested to read it.

Now the really funny thing about this monthly publication that no one seems to ever read is the personal columns – it’s a ad space – where you have hilarious personal ads presumably posted by lonely intellectuals hoping to find love – stuff like I am Jewish, stay with my eighty year old mother, hobbies include candle making and watching grass grow….take a chance on me…I am actually quite exciting!

Ads like that…you get my drift – well one day out of sheer curiosity I decided to make an anonymous donation to this publication where the editor seems to begging for money all under the threat of imminent foreclosure – and I got around to asking him why would such a seriously Bohemian off beat rag have a personal ad column and he just quipped prosaically, Oh most of the people who take up space there, do so, so as to not embarrass themselves with the bother of donating money to us like you.

I guess what the editor was trying to convey in a very polite way to a Philistine farmer such as myself is – good writing. The sort where the author chooses to splay whole ideas in the form of long winded disquisitions that even requires the reader to bear out patiently right to the very end – rather than trying to compress everything into just Twitter nano vignettes – will always be a lousy and expensive proposition.

They’re all like aspiring novelists (Or worse still! God please do forbid!—poets), they all rely on teaching and pay anything you like writer’s 101 workshops for a steady income. What they teach is really just to get by to enable to write what they really want or need to write; the paradox is though none of these writers would actually admit it – they’re actually inspiring an eclectic class of writers to write really well in an off beat sort of way. You know the sort of writing that even makes the hair at the back of your neck stand up and shout out – Wow! But most importantly they also encourage a very discerning class of readers who for some reason all seem to wear Burberry and Laura Ashley and give me a coy Holland V look whenever I see them in the library.

No! I don’t imagine good writing or for that matter good journalism can ever be cheap – it’s hardly the brass knuckles that can all add up to a viable living. At times, the entire writers fraternity resembles a wispy romantic yearning from a Proustian period Fin de siècle bordering on les delires des grandeurs and la folie du doute….Many of the essays in the New York Book Review do have that Wildian feel of barbed repartees. Yet this is never a simple transaction between the authority of the pen and the reader. For authors, money, however obscurely, has always been elusive and the stuff of the forlornly.

Hence it’s all too easy to forget that writing especially the sort that is still able to make a well heeled and educated girl in a Burberry scarf laugh uncontrollably only to turn beet root red (I happen to think nothing is as sexy as that…to me at least) will always be expensive and it can never be cheap.

This I imagine will always be somewhat considered as still an effrontery to some unsophisticated quarters – as they regard publishing as just reportage: Literature as just literature.

The danger and this especially heightened in the everything is for free sake internet age – is if those of us remain bovine or worst still unwilling to support the arts and even the craftsman’s along with his trade be it the humble shoemaker, tailor or even truffle scourger – we may lose it all completely and forever.

You know I want to believe that it’s possible to make America great again…I so do…right down to the marrow of my bones…after all how else do you expect a self respecting frontier man to get by in life with made in China buy and throw boots!’