My father's frequent use of World War II lingo amused me when I was a kid.
One phrase he reserved for encounters with people he disagreed with went, "You don't know shit from Shinola."
My five-year old self had no clue what Shinola was, but context always made the meaning of the expression clear: "Your judgement's off."
Call me a procrastinator, but I have at last looked up the meaning of "Shinola."
Today, the name is owned by a luxury goods retailer; but in the now-faded past Shinola was a shoe polish manufactured in Rochester, New York.
Shinola was the brainchild of a Gilded Age chemist named George Wetmore, who formulated the stuff in his spare time, experimenting in a makeshift lab in his basement.
The product was a hit, fast becoming the world's leading brand and making Wetmore fabulously wealthy. Manufacturing continued until 1960.
The luxury goods company bought the abandoned brand name in 2001, in large part because its investors thought my father's funky phrase would make a good tagline.
What'd they know?
