I'M REMINDED OF A HOMETOWN COBBLER

Mr. Cobbler, Mr. Cobbler please mend my shoes

Fix them so the nails won't hurt me
O yes, please do
For I'm running, skipping, jumping
All the day through.

...Or words to that affect. This was only one of a number of 18th century nursery rhyme songs taught to me by my mother when I was knee-high to a grass hopper, still in diapers I think.

A newer version of the song goes something like this: "Mr. Cobbler, Mr. Cobbler, please mend my shoes. Have them done bye by half past two. Stitch them up and stitch them down, and I will give you half a crown!"

As Europe neared the end of the 18th century, an explosion of new art, literature, and music renewed interest in ‘folk art’ and ancient themes, including supernatural beings like elves. Scholars, dramatists, and artists joined a rekindled interest in folklore, seeking to uncover ancient stories. In this period, what we think of as elves, fairies, and a host of other traditional European folk characters began to take their familiar shape. Andrew Lang gave fairies their butterfly wings in ‘Princess Nobody’, and the Brothers Grimm gave elves their cobbling hammers in ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’. These characters remain fixed in our imaginations to this day, essentially unchanged.

This all came to mind for me following a virtual history group conversation I had with a young lady from my hometown of Dresden. Her grandfather just happened to be a cobbler/shoe repair man of my acquaintance during formative years in the 1940s.

Clickers and accessories

Clarence Breaton Sr. was a throwback cobbler, complete with black rubber apron and leather-stained hands, in his small, antiquated repair shop on main street. Those were the days when all shoes were made of leather and designed to last. Clarence served up the works, completely rebuilding footwear -- heels, soles and all. You had a choice of half-soles and leather or rubber heels. I visited him frequently to have "clickers" replaced on the heels of my shoes because they wore down quickly.

Metal clickers were supposed to make heels last longer but we kids liked the sound of them as we click, clicked down the street military style. There was no sneaking up on anybody in those days! Clickers were a macho status symbol.

Clarence Breaton's handiwork. Glove
padded with felt and neatly stitched.

Clarence was no one-trick pony either. He padded and re-stitched baseball gloves for both me and my dad because my fastball was gaining in velocity as we regularly played catch in our backyard during summer months. The extra felt padding also helped firm up my dad's glove because he lost a finger on his left hand as the result of a shot gun accident in his youth.

Clarence's shop also doubled as a museum of sorts with World War One memorabilia on the walls, even a mysterious suit of armor that somehow managed to fly under the radar of local historians. Would be interesting to know if anyone in the Breaton family know anything about it or of the whereabouts today.

A member of the Canadian Navy Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in WW1, serving in France and England, Clarence suffered a serious leg wound and walked with a noticeable limp for the balance of his life.

Shoemakers existed in all civilizations and were among the first European settlers in North America. They were divided between two professions. Cobblers repaired existing shoes; cordwainers made shoes from scratch. The first European cordwainer came to the New World in 1629, two decades after the first cobbler.

The expense and difficulty in importing goods from Europe meant that cobblers played a vital part in the early American economy. Shoemakers’ value went beyond the economic, however. The cobblers were also an informal news network. These craftsmen traveled from town to town, and as they repaired shoes they shared news among isolated settlements. The advent of machinery and other advances in shoe-making in the 19th century would change this, however.

Although cobblers and cordwainers have both been prized throughout history for their skills, shoes have changed dramatically over the course of time and so has their price tags.

Combined with American Lyman Blake’s invention in 1864 of a sewing machine designed to sew shoes (it could handle thick leather better than the machines designed to sew cloth for tops and bottoms), this technology allowed for shoemaking to shift out of the homes and shops of cobblers and into full factory settings.

As styles quadrupled in the past century and synthetic materials coupled with mass production made for cheaper brands of shoes, repair shops that were a staple of Western culture, became few and far between.

Still we from a couple of generations back still remember shoe repair as an essential service. The well-worn proverb “The shoemaker’s children always go barefoot” and the story of the elves who helped a shoemaker in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, later adapted by the Muppets, have helped keep the memory alive.

Some of the more nostalgic among us also remember with fondness good old Clarence Breaton and his uniquely interesting shop in downtown Dresden. But our numbers are dwindling, right?

If the shoe fits, we have to wear it!