When I was a boy in 1950’s South Brooklyn, Easter Sunday was a day of celebration for my family. Wearing our newest dress clothes, we went to the 11 AM mass at Saint Michael’s and then to my maternal grandmother’s apartment for a sumptuous dinner. My parents sat with my aunts and uncles at a large kitchen table, while my brother and I joined our cousins at a small card table in the living room. 

I think fondly of those loud, happy gatherings so many years ago as Easter Sunday approaches this year and remember clearly my father’s wooden shoeshine box. 

On Easter morning, he took it from the bottom of his closet and brought it into the bedroom my brother and I shared. He pressed a metal snap and the box opened with a loud “pop”, revealing an assortment of brushes, tins of polish, gloves, and a large cloth rag.

My father would raise his leg and put his shoe up on the carved foot rest on top of the closed box. He applied polish on the top and sides of his shoe. After brushing the polish in, he then buffed the shoe with a large cloth rag. He sometimes lifted the rag and snapped it, creating a loud pop!

He shined our shoes next.   Eventually he taught us his M.O.  As I got older, sometimes I shined my father’s shoes, but he really enjoyed doing it himself. 

I never quite got that snapping and popping sound of the rag to my satisfaction. But I laughed knowingly to myself years later when I heard Johnny Cash’s version of GOT RHYTHM.

Racioppo family on Easter Sunday – shoes shined and dressed up.

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Larry Racioppo’s new book is Here Down on Dark Earth: Loss and Remembrance in New York City (Fordham University Press), photographs by Larry Racioppo, text by Clifford Thompson and Jan Ramirez. Information on May 8th authors’ discussion of the book  at the Center for Brooklyn History

Racioppo’s photographs are in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the New York Public Library; the Brooklyn Public Library; El Museo del Barrio, New York; and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York. Recent monographs include Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971–1983 (Cornell University Press, 2018), Coney Island Baby (South Brooklyn Boy, 2021), and I Hope I Break Even, I Could Use The Money (Blurring Books, 2024).