Bradford Lad: Lasting Shoes
Mike Coatesworth recalls the days when shoes had to last a long time, even if the wearer ended up with curling toes.
The other day I was in the city centre with my daughter Lesley who said she needed to buy some shoes. We headed for the market and she went from stall to stall, trying on pair after pair.
I asked her what was wrong with the shoes she was wearing. She said they were worn out, and she needed a new pair to wear when she came to town.
Now I happen to know that my daughter owns more pairs of shoes than I can count. Me, I own just two pairs of shoes, and I only buy a new pair when the old ones really are finished. Some years back I would have taken the old ones to a cobbler to be repaired, but nowadays it is cheaper to buy a new pair.
When I was a lad I was brought up to understand that shoes had to last a long time. We couldn't afford to be going to the shoe shop every five minutes. We had to make do with what we'd got. Woe betide us if we didn't. There was trouble if we so much as scuffed he topecaps of shoes.
Even then I had two pairs of shoes, one pair to go to school in, and the other, kept spotless, for wearing to church on a Sunday. When my shoes became worn my dad bought leather and brought out his cobbler's lasts. No way was he a cobbler. The lasts had been handed down to him by his father.
Dad placed my shoes on the lasts, cut leather to fit the soles and heels, then for some minutes the only sound you heard was nails being hammered home. The hammering was done carefully so that the sharp point of a nail to not intrude into a place where it could snag a foot. To say that he had no formal training he did not make too bad a job of it. He repaired all our family's shoes, and I don't recall anyone ever complaing of being stabbed by a protruding nail.
My shoes were repaired as many as three times before a decision was finally taken to throw them away. My parents complained that my feet were growing faster than the rest of my body. I had to make shoes last as long as possile, even if it meant curling up my toes and enduring pain if I walked any distance.
On our shopping trip Lesley finally found a pair of shoes which she liked. I told her I thought they were okay, knowing that if she bought them they would only be worn for a matter of weeks.
‘Daddy, can you lend me a tenner?’ she asked innocently.
I handed over a ten pound note, realising that in this case "lend'' meant "give''. And I couldn't keep myself from thinking that £10 would probably have kept me in decent footwear throughout my boyhood.
