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Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's storehouse of human knowledge29-May-1992
Dear Cecil:
Can you solve a mystery for us? Why is it that every so often as you're driving along
there's just one shoe lying there on the road? There's never the other shoe in the pair,
just that one shoe.
Does someone throw their shoe out the window in disgust? Do kids throw their parents'
shoes out the back of the station wagon? Do they sprout from seeds sewn by bird droppings
in the pavement?
This is a worldwide phenomenon: I've seen road shoes sit there, dusty and flattened, in
India, Europe, and Mexico and on many highways and byways of North America. Any advice
will be appreciated. --Emily Baumbach, San Rafael, California
Dear Emily:
Well, we can nix the sprout-from-seeds hypothesis right off the bat. You're undoubtedly
thinking of shoe TREES. (Haw!)
Many great and not-so-great minds have wrestled with this phenomenon without arriving at
any firm conclusions. I note, for instance, that my fellow investigator David Feldman
devotes seven pages to the topic in his book When Do Fish Sleep, in the course of
which he elucidates 13 theories on lone shoe origin. Clearly, what Dave needs is to meet a
nice girl. It is high time I settled matters once and for all.
First a few observations from the field. As usual in the case of your more inscrutable
questions, Cecil and his minions have been prospecting for tips on the radio. So far we
have come up with the following:
None of this really gets at the heart of the matter, however. Cecil and his dedicated
research team, including two short and irrepressible members who several times came
perilously close to contributing personally to the lost shoe population, recently
conducted a 1,500-mile cross-country car trip, traveling on everything from interstates to
gravel roads. En route we passed thousands of identifiable items of roadside debris,
chiefly pieces of retread tire on the interstates (how anybody can stand to drive on those
things I will never know) and food packaging (mostly cans and bottles) everywhere else.
Total shoe count: four, including one each in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Louisville,
Kentucky, and two on the road into Chicago.
Granted this was in May, not (to hear some tell it) the height of shoe season. And I
probably missed a few, such as when one of the little researchers was screaming at the top
of her lungs. Still, considering the vast quantity of roadside junk, we are talking about
a tiny number of shoes. I would venture to say people have the idea that the
highways are littered with shoes because (1) a roadside shoe is such an ineffably
memorable sight, and (2) virtually all other trash on the road is either anonymous or
numbingly commonplace. As to why you always see one shoe, never a pair, what do you
expect? Assuming most of the shoes are lost by accident, the chances of two randomly
ejected shoes landing together is vanishingly small.
That's the way I see it, anyway. But I'll concede the topic has unplumbed depths. Further
insight from the Teeming Millions is cordially solicited.
TESTIMONY
Dear Cecil:
At last you took on that great mystery of the universe, the single shoe phenomenon, about
which the scientific community has been suspiciously silent. As a life-long observer of
the one-shoe enigma, I can offer several observations:
(1) A few weeks ago while driving on the main Seattle freeway I noticed that the passenger
of the car in front of me was holding a shoe out the window. Accelerating to investigate,
I saw that the shoe in question appeared to be covered with some foul substance (canine in
origin, I suspect). As I continued to follow this car, the passenger lost his hold
on the ill-fated Nike. They slowed down, but then appeared to give up and drove on,
leaving the shoe to help carry on the legend.
(2) A neighbor of mine arrived home disgruntled. She had taken her children to the beach
and had inadvertently left a pair of the kids' sandals on top of her car.
Unlike the aforementioned owner of the befouled shoe, she tried to rescue them upon
hearing them clump down the back of the Volvo, but the highway was too busy and the
sandals had already been run over multiple times. During the next few days I traversed
that stretch of road and saw Noel's sandals (in flattened state). Now the clincher:
a week later I drove down that road once again, and ONLY ONE SHOE WAS LEFT. --Your
faithful correspondent, Joyce Kehoe, Seattle, Washington
Dear Cecil:
Regarding your recent column about the "one shoe in the road" mystery: I
used to wonder about that too, but now I know. It is a steamy night in August; you
are wearing flip-flops; you are so drunk that you are crawling down Clark Street; you pass
out, are picked up by an ambulance and taken to an emergency rehab facility; when you are
released in the AM, you have only one flip-flop, the other being somewhere on Clark
Street. --Most sincerely and grateful to be alive, Jean, Evanston, Illinois
Dear Jean:
"Emergency rehab facility"? Man, I'm going to have to remember that one next
time they toss ME in the drunk tank. While we now have an explanation for the
disgraceful situation on Clark Street, I stand by my view that the dimensions of the lone
shoe phenomenon have been greatly exaggerated.
Dear Cecil:
Upon locating a parking place in the City this summer, I maneuvered into curbside position
next to a bank of ice plant. Exiting the car, I could not help noticing what seemed to be
a pair of shoes a couple feet up the bank. Imagine my bewilderment when on closer
inspection these turned out to be almost identical, quite well- used, phosphorescent pink
pumps--both left foot. --Jeste Trantwine, San Francisco
Dear Cecil:
Having traveled behind station wagons with tailgate windows open, I have seen a lone shoe
and other odd objects sucked out of the window while driving along. The people in the
vehicles are apparently unaware of the loss, and probably are quite perplexed when the
objects are discovered missing. --R. Yeazel, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Dear Cecil:
When I lived in Houston, I noticed a large number of (single) shoes on the highway, on
gravel back roads, etc., and was driven to start a Roadside Shoe Collection. Often it was
quite a feat, retrieving those worn down items in traffic every day, but I did it--I was
obsessed, I guess. I started taking Polaroids of the shoes, titling them and noting
exactly where they were found. This went on for the better part of a year. I found that
late summer through winter was the best time for adding to the collection. Eventually I
accumulated nearly 10 single shoes.
People thought I was weird, yes, but none thought so enough to make me abandon the hobby
until a young lady came along, the friend of a friend--two friends removed--who discovered
among my collection the missing mate to her favorite pair. She was really wasted when she
lost the one I now had, and couldn't identify from the photograph anytime she had been in
the location noted. Reluctantly, I returned her shoe (she had kept the other one)
and, either because of that turn of events or because a current love interest couldn't
deal with such utter strangeness existing in the garage, I ceased my fetish. For the time
being.
Years later I moved to New York and for a short time collected single gloves. Should I
seek help? --James Dean Jay Byrd, New York
Dear James:
Nah. Collecting gloves isn't that hard. In the interest of thoroughly beating the subject
into the ground, I should mention that another reader has sent a column from Denver Post
reporter Renate Robey, which reads in part: "Denver street sweeping crews
report that they find more single shoes in areas where there are more homeless people.
"In some neighborhoods, people leave boxes of clothes and shoes in the alley for
homeless people who rummage through the alleys. They say a homeless person might be more
likely to toss out one worn shoe, but keep the other half of the pair if the shoe is not
worn out."
BREAKTHROUGH!
Noted friend of science Ken Grabowski of Chicago's Field Museum has sent me a clipping
from the American Geophysical Union journal that may help unravel the
why-you-always-see-one-shoe-by-the- side-of-the-road conundrum once and for all. It
seems that on May 27, 1990, a storm struck the container ship Hansa Carrier in the north
Pacific (48 degrees N, 161 W), resulting in--get ready for this--80,000 Nike brand shoes
being lost overboard. "Six months to a year later," the journal reports,
"thousands of shoes washed ashore in North America from southern Oregon to the Queen
Charlotte Islands."
Hmm, you're thinking, and you're not the only one. Ocean scientists immediately began
investigating. So far, the report states, they have "gathered beachcomber reports and
compared the inferred shoe drift with an oceanographic hindcast model and historical drift
bottle returns." Such a joy to see professionals at work.
Yet to be explained is how one of the shoes got from the Pacific coast to Louisville,
Kentucky, where it was transformed into the orange work boot spotted by the Straight Dope
Field Survey Team last May. As Cecil's editor observed: "But Kentucky is
landlocked!" You've put your finger on it, kid. Much obviously remains to be learned
about ocean drift patterns. Maybe it was the seagulls. We'll keep you posted on further
news.
--CECIL ADAMS
The Straight Dope / Questions or
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