Where Are The Cobblers?

When I was a kid we always took our shoes to the shoe shop to get them repaired. Everyone did and there were shoe shops all over the neighborhood. It smelled of glue, leather and shoe shine. When you went to pick up your repaired shoes, they were on shelves with a ticket that had your name on them. Simple business deal. Drop them off, chat with the cobbler to see if indeed they were fixable and come back in a few days to pick them up. When you picked up your shoes they would pack them in a paper bag.

I can still hear my mom's voice saying, oh we gotta bring these to the shoe shop.

There are no more shoe shops or if there are I haven't seen one in years. I especially remember bringing my school shoes to the shoe shop. Got new heels or soles, sometimes both at the same time. You could tell how I walked by the bottom of my shoes. And with the price of shoes these days, maybe that's a trade that will come back to being. We just throw our shoes away, even if they're not worn out, they're out of style, there's so many shoes to buy, so many choices. Me, I used to be one of those women with tons and tons of shoes. Same shoe in three different colors. Shoes that matched only one dress or outfit. I remember I fell in love with a pair of shoes once and I bought two of them for when I wore the first pair out. And I wore both those pair of shoes to death.

I have to say I still have way too many shoes but not nearly as many as I did in my 20s and 30s. I go for comfort these days and wear my sneakers as much as possible and my other favorite footwear after sneakers are my black boots, no heal to speak of, very basic and I have to buy them on line because they are so hard to find in stores. I guess they are out of style but they're still my style. Now if there were shoe shops in town I'd be able to take them to get fixed, instead when mine get worn out I spend hours on line looking for my black boots.

There also was a shoe shine guy on the corners, again all over the neighborhood, even in the subway stations. I don't see them any more either. The last shoe shine guys I've seen have been at the big financial firms and law firms I've worked for in Manhattan, older gentlemen who walked the floors saying "shine?" And while working on the trading floor or on a legal documents, they would get their shoes shined men and women. Also the Staten Island Ferry, there again you would hear an older gentlemen walking buy saying "shine". And lots of people would get their shoes shined while riding the Ferry to or back home from work.

I still shine my shoes at home. It's something I have had for 25 years now at least, works really great on all kinds of shoe material. It kinda looks like an eraser, the wooden side being some sort of plastic with ridges and it works great on suede shoes and again other types of shoes as well. The eraser side looks like a soft piece of packing material, it's grey, sponge like. That side shines my shoes and they look like new. Unfortunately I still wear the bottom of shoes out pretty quick from my fast paced, off balance walk!

I remember my father had a shoe shine kit and I remember he had lots of shoes. I bet more than my mom had. All shiny and perfect and remember him using his shoe shine kit. When you closed the box it had the little lift for your foot to rest upon while you polished and shined your shoes. The kit was in the family for years. When my dad used it you would get shoe polish in a can that was kind of like a hockey puck and he had old rags in there to buff them and a brush to shine them, a process. Then they came out with the shoe polish in a bottle which had a sponge dispenser on top, I rarely see that anymore. Do you? Just throw the shoes away and buy a new pair. I know in my family shoes and sneakers, boots too are passed down and starting now to be passed up. My 15 year old nephew, Christian, who, as most kids do, grows out of his sneakers before they are worn out and my sister packs them in a bag for my brother Joey's boys. Last time Joey's son Robert tried them on, he said hey dad, these are your size! So now Joey's getting hand-me-ups. I myself have been getting hand-me-ups for years now. Again I am the family measuring stick. Let's see how much taller than Aunt Tricia are you. There's only six of them now smaller than me, gaining on me every day!

Maybe years ago things were meant to last. Yes maybe things would need to be fixed along the way, but basically houses were built well, strong thick walls, brick. Shoes were made to last and were worn pretty much everyday, you didn't have two pair except sneakers and the cheap flip flops you bought in the supermarket. Those I could wear out in a day with my walk! The house we lived in was old and there weren't a lot of closets and the ones we had were not very big. The biggest closet in our house was the kitchen pantry, that was like a little room. The other closets were small, made for the one coat per person, a few dresses or suits and some small storage area on a shelf above the bar to hang clothes on (a wooden bar with wire hangars!) and again just a small closet, the room for so many shoes was just not there.

But when did the cobblers disappear? And the shoe shine men? When did it become okay to just throw away good shoes without trying to fix them or pass them down. I guess people do donate them? A throw away world, with so much more than just shoes.

I think there are many things in our modern world that are better than yesterday, but you have to admit, nothing is made the way it used to be, to last, even fixable. A throw away world.

Bring back the cobblers!