My father had to find another line of work, and wound up selling dry goods
and then furniture to the same loyal clientele at the same location on the
same Easy Credit Terms. But he remained a shoemaker at heart; just buying
and selling stuff never gave him the same satisfaction. I believe I can
understand. To this day, the smell of shoe leather is the smell of home.
I still prefer to have my shoes repaired rather than buy a stiff new pair. I
used to know a fine shoemaker in a small Arkansas town - Mr. Kraeszig - and
I took the same rundown pair of shoes back to him so many times for one
final fix that he finally told me it was time to take them off life support.
Even the best doctor can do only so much for a patient.
The whole family was in the shoe repair business back then; one of my
cousins in Chicago still keeps an old Landis stitcher in his basement and
does an occasional half-sole just to stay in practice. Another keeps a
beautifully shined shoe last in the hallway of his swank double apartment
just off the Magnificent Mile - under a spotlight. Just as a reminder. It's
the same one his father had used as owner and proprietor of Harry's Shoe
Hospital on Halsted Street. Now, like Harry's, Greenberg Shoe Co., 836 Texas
Ave., Shreveport, La., exists only in memory.
Enough about shoes. My respects to you, Frau Professor - and respect, since
you teach chemistry. Chem was my downfall as a college student. I was
probably the briefest pre-med major Centenary College ever had. A demanding
but kind old professor did me and medicine a great service when he offered
to give me a charitable D-minus in his course if I would take a solemn oath
never - never! - to have anything to do with chemistry for the rest of my
natural life. I leapt at the deal, and neither I nor the world of chemistry
has ever had cause to regret it.
As for the world of shoemakers, thank you moving me to revisit it as it once
was - before plastics had replaced leather in so many shoes, and what once
was a widespread craft had become a small specialty. To again be
zusammen schustern,or together with shoemakers, if
only in memory, was wholly a pleasure.
Nostalgically,
Inky Wretch |