 The stream of regurgitated seawash shot straight up my nose, catching me off guard and making me gag slightly. Drizzle started to fall as I crouched in the low-tide muck of a marsh on Rhode Island's Conanicut Island. Unpleasant
conditions, but typical for this sort of business. My prey was pinned on its back under my stare, ripe for the taking. Pushing aside my clam bucket, I swiped at the quahog and it spit at me again, its salty geyser landing on the thick rubber forefoot of one of my L.L. Bean Boots, formerly named Maine Hunting Shoes, and more commonly known as duck boots.
Call them what you like. I was just thankful to have the ten-inch-high leather cuffs protecting my feet. Nothing was getting past that triple-stitched seam where the rubber meets the hide.
This was back in 1986, and the incident remains the closest thing to big-game action my duck boots have seen. I've worn some version of them since grade school, starting with the popular six-inch cuff. (For the record, I had my first of nine pairs—worn, of course, with the laces untied and knotted at the ends—well before Lisa Birnbach gave
Bean Boots her stamp of approval in The Official Preppy Handbook.) They were the perfect armor for stepping off a school bus into a half-frozen puddle of gray slush.
Today, they're even better. The 88-year-old Bean Boot was revamped for this winter to be tougher, warmer, and sturdier. Don't worry—they look exactly the same, with their chain-link tread, ribbed rubber bootie, and sumptuous leather cuffs. But the once-squishy sole is fortified with a steel shank. A sweat-wicking synthetic has replaced cotton in
the lining. And the rubber is now injection-molded (in Maine) rather than vulcanized, making a lighter boot with surer traction. Not that I ever had a complaint during my countless winters in Providence. Or my four in Syracuse, one in Chicago, and four in Toledo. The boots are at their best tromping through slop. They brighten the stale color of a suit.
They look great under jammies when I'm taking out the garbage in a squall. I don't remember what my first pair cost, but new ones go for between $70 and $90, depending on the cuff height (six12 inches; 800-441-5713). Season after season, year after year, my ducks remain stately, preppy, smug—an embodiment of New England itself.
But Leon Leonwood Bean didn't care about aesthetic romanticism. The mail-order outfitter's namesake and founder was simply fed up with hunting moose and deer in shoddy, soggy shoes. All-leather models leaked, all-rubber boots cracked. So in the winter of 1911 he sewed leather tops on basic rubbers, and soon fellow hunters and friends were asking for
pairs of the crude-yet-slimeproof boots. Working from the basement of his Freeport clothing store, he created the catalog colossus on the strength of the boot sales alone. Eventually, L.L. Bean accounted for enough parcel traffic to upgrade Freeport's post office from third class to second class.
The boots are still handmade in Maine, upwards of 100,000 pairs a year. And despite my lack of blood-and-guts hunting experience, I feel something akin to pride in reading this from the 1924 catalog: "Outside of your gun, nothing is so important as your footwear." I hear ya, Mr. Bean. When the government comes knocking at my door, they'll have to pry the
duck boots from my cold, dead feet. —CHRISTOPHER BORRELLI
Useful and popular as they may be, Chums sunglasses retainers have never really overcome their lone cringe-inducing flaw: the rattail you're stuck with after snugging the adjuster bead against your head. The new Diplomat ($5; 800-222-2486) gets around that unadvisable look by overlapping the ends and fitting each one with a slider. Pull the sliders away
from each other and the slack magically disappears—no stray extension to flap in the breeze, catch on your helmet, or worse, make you look like some New Age cashier at the local health-food market. —ERIC HANSEN
Photo: Michael Llewellyn
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