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Sometimes I just don't feel like taking the time to completely loosen the laces on my shoes when I take them off. One morning, as I struggled to don my shoes with a shoehorn, I felt the Superman-like sensation of steel bending to the shape of my fingers. While I do a lot of typing, I don't consider myself to have super-human strength in my hands, and the only possible conclusion was that the shoehorn I was using represented yet another example of the decline of quality in American consumer goods.

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As a child in the 1960s, I used to play with my father's shoe maintenance kit. It was a small wooden box with an angled platform on it the size and shape of a shoe to facilitate shining one's shoes. It contained shoe polish, buffing brushes, and a metal shoehorn. My father was a scientist, and sometime in the 1970s he went 100% leisure suit for work with slip-on shoes, and thus I inherited the shoe kit.

As a young adult in the 1980s, I was not a scientist, and hence wore a suit to work. When purchasing dress shoes, the store would sometimes throw in a shoehorn with the sale. In this manner, I acquired a second shoe-horn.

I submit the photographic evidence, for your consideration. As you can see, the 1950s shoehorn is substantially thicker than the 1980s one. The 1980s shoehorn shows the bending from my superhuman grip, as well as a fine patina of rust, though the unit is at least 30 years newer than the old one. Also, the newer one doesn't have a hole drilled in the handle in case you want to put the shoehorn on a lanyard.

Still, the 1980s shoehorn represents an improvement over the 21st century shoehorn. These are made out of plastic. Since plastic is even weaker, they are over an eighth of an inch thick and are not as slippery as the metal ones, which makes putting the shoe on even more difficult. If you see a metal shoehorn at an estate sale--pick it up at any cost.