"True Story Bro" time...
So as I adjusted to my new life in the big city and started slowly gravitating more and more toward the "working class" punker/musician end of the social spectrum I began to appreciate the functionality and aesthetics of combat boots (not Doc's... but genuine Garisson's).
Of course such boots need a pretty constant care regime that would generally be taught by the powers that be who would issue said boots to... yanno, their employees.
Not being one of those employees myself such footwear maintenance education needed to be gleaned from the advice of other similarly uneducated individuals (at least in the realm of maintaining combat footwear).
Now don't get me wrong. I did not wear these boots as a fashion accesory. I worked hard, played hard and generally lived a chaotic life that probably would have broken my toes/footsies multiple times but those good ole Garry's were like foot armor.
Anyhoo... so at one point (earlier on in my CB wearing experience) I had somehow been convinced that you could use bacon grease to waterproof/preserve your boots. Since bacon was actually pretty cheap back then (at least in my hood) it was one of the few things I actually bought and cooked at home (becamncheezumssammies).
So I started saving the grease and slathering it all over my cracking (literally cracking... not the wierd English "CRACKING JERB OLE MAYTE" meaning of the word) boots.
This did seem to restore the leather at first but had the unintended side effect of all the neighborhood dogs incessantly licking and nipping at my boots everywhere I went.
Much to the amusement of all my jerk arsed friends who owned said dogs after I told them what I had done to my boots.
And of course the whole bacon grease thing might have been some WWI trench warfare stopgap solution but really it seems to degrade the leather faster in the long run.
/TSB