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CAPf M*r COUNTY MAGAZINE 8 JUNE '63

Shoe Repair Keeps Pop's Memory Alive 'The business took me over...'

” I'from Page 17) on Mechanic Street. “I'm not as fast as what Pop was,” Coldwell said. “Lots of times I'd like to have him here to say, 'Hey pop, how do I do this?” "Pop and I was buddies," she coninued. "I was the jack man, and he was the machine man.” She is just beginning to learn to operate the machines that her father manipulated so skillfully when she was a child. Back in September, Coldwell said, she got a call from a “good Samaritan.” "THIS (iUY CALLED and he said, ‘What are you going to do

with the stock?’ I said, ‘Keep it, I guess.' He asked if I could do the work, and I said, ‘Everything but the big stitcher.’ He said, 'I’ll teach you.’ A complete stranger!” Coldwell’s “complete stranger” has turned into a necessary friend for the Mechanic Street business. Every week she takes lessons from her unnamed benefactor and is now beginning to fee! the mastery of the craft that her father loved. “I'm getting kind of proud of my patching," she said, holding up a healthy looking pair of shoes.

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“There’s nothing wrong with being proud of a job.” THE REACTION to the twowoman shoe repair shop is good, said Coldwell. “People are really glad to have a place to take their shoes to be fixed. They’re happy the shop’s

here.”

They are also happy to see the Young name remain on the plate glass window. “People come in here and they say, ‘On, how nice; you took over your faher’s business.’ I say to them, ‘Hell no, the business took me over.’ “Then I got a man who comes in here just to watch me work,” she said, laughing. "I don’t need that. It makes me nervous. "YOU KNOW, it may sound funny, but there’s nothing like running a shoe shop for the smells," she added, slapping more cement on yet another pair of heels. “I even worked for a shoe repairman in Alaska when my husband was ip the Air Force.” But shoe repair is a dying trade, Coldwell said. "They're making’ shoes cheaper, so people thow them out instead of getting them

fixed.”

Few persons are willing to put the investment into starting a shoe repair business. “People want money the easy way and shoe repairing is not an easy job.” The equipment is also expensive. New machines like the patcher cost $1,500. The “big” stitcher runs $5,000. The return is perhaps $5 for putting on heels, a bit more for dyeing or stitching. IDA YOUNG has seen a lot of changes in Cape May Court House in the 60 years that she’s been a part of the shoe repair shop. “There was no electric during the day then," she said. “So we got the shoes ready in the morning, and stitched after six when the electric came on.” “This street here,” she said, pointing out the open door of the shop toward Mechanic Street, “was a horse and wagon street when we came. It’s been widened three times since then." From her post at 3 Mechanic Street, she has seen an A&P store, a meat market and a Masonic lodge fill the spot across the street, now a parking lot for the Guaranteed Bank. "There was a beautiful stone bank before,” she remembered. “It broke my heart to have them tear it down.” The shoe repair shop itself has had two other locations. The first was in the Bellevue Tavern during its hotel days. The second was located where the County Library

stands.

DURING WORLD WAR II, the family had vegetable trucks that made daily runs to Stone Harbor. They also doubled as a door-to-door shoe shop. “We’d go to Avalon and Stone Harbor and go door-to-door asking if people had any shoes to be repaired. Many times we’d come home with a truck load of shoes, and dad and I’d come back and fix them. Then we’d take them back the next day.. Dad put my one

. On the cover, Ida Young and tmogene Coldwell at the Charles Young Shoe Repair.

sister through college, and the other sister through beauty culture school that way. There was a lot of times I remembered dad burning the midnight oil.” Hard work seems to run in the family. Coldwell rises at six to prepare for the day. After her “treat of the day,” a cup of coffee with her husband at a local diner, she and her mother open the store and work till closing at five. After supper, there is work in the halfacre field, behind their home on Hereford Avenues, where 1,100 strawberry plants are now starting to bear fruit. The shop is filled with the labors of that half-acre field. Lined on shelves are preserves and jams boasting the logo, “The Pure Stuff!” Outside, in front of the shop, are tomato plants and geraniums. Just inside the plate glass window, almost belying its “shoe repair” inscription, are onions, peppers and pickets. SCATTERED AMONG ailing shoes are signs advertising Harlequin Romances (5 for $1), shoe polish, glassware, costume jewelry, a polyester jacket ($3). An aging refrigerator holds dozens of fresh, even double-yolk, eggs. The first-time visitor is overwhelmed with visual stimuli. The shoe repair store becomes a miniature five and dime. “The vegetables and flowers that’s mom’s business," explained Coldwell, as Mrs. Young loaded the remaining stock of geraniums into the arms of a customer. At 79, Ida Young continues to work in the shop, doing patching and stitching, and tending to customers. Over the years she has developed quite a psychology of customers. "I can read them like a book when they come in the door,” she said. "EACH PERSON is different in how they wear their shoes,” added her daughter. Not all customers are sympathetic to the difficulties of shoe repair. “If you let ’em beat you down, it spoils your whole day,” said Coldwell. “It’s not worth the high blood pressure, the heart ache, and the bad health.” But mostly, she said, it is the people that make the work enjoyable. ‘ I couldn’t just sit at home. I have to have places to go to. I enjoy people. My dad enjoyed people." As for the future of the shop, Coldwell has no answer for that yet. "We could survive without it,” she said, dusting off another finished work. “The way I look at it, we’re keeping Pop’s name going. This is still his business. It’s still Pop’s money. And sometimes I still wait for him to drive up and say ‘How’s it going?’”