Mack Hall
Flavius: Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
Second Commoner: Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl. I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters, but with awl. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes. When they are in great danger I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork.
-- Julius Caesar
Last week I had occasion to visit a shoemaker to have a pair of shoes re-soled and re-heeled, a practice common even a generation ago but now almost unheard of.
Shoes now come from slave factories in China, and when worn out are thrown away (“recycled”), as are redundant Chinese workers, not mended. China is now progressing in robotics to the point where one’s new leather shoes are perhaps not made by Prisoner Chang but of Prisoner Chang.
Most shoes look like cancerous mushrooms on steroids, but people are convinced by advertising that these blobs are cool because they are worn by some millionaire while he kills dogs or something. Looking for shoes that take a polish is now an adventure.
My cobbler is a smart young man who can discourse expertly on the merits of digital vs. film as media for recording images as well as on leather. He looked at my shoes and immediately knew the brand, the place of manufacture, and the eccentricities of the stitchery unique to the company who made the shoe.
His shop, marked appropriately by a wooden silhouette of a boot hanging from a chain, smelled of leather, wood, oils, and tools, all very much like The City Shoe Shop of happy memory.
And can you say “City Shoe Shop” over and over, really fast, without saying something naughty?
Nowhere was there any evidence of a computer in the cobbler’s shop; indeed, the only evidence of technology was the electric light. The tools were all hand tools, honest wood and iron, and the work bench was an archaeological site, worn and scratched and battered, among the litter of which history could be studied. And isn’t that the way art should be!
Here were no pixellated penguins, no electronic sermons yapping about my ideological failures, no preachments about why I should walk barefoot instead of killing a cow for shoes, no fashionable bottles of water, no body piercings, but rather that increasingly rare man, a real artisan pursuing his craft with his hands and his brain.
I am not nearly so gifted, but I can manage a bit of the rough carpentry I learned on the farm. Recently I felt the need to build some bookshelves. I have most of the tools I need for such small projects, including the hammer my father gave me for my 8th grade graduation for a summer of building fences. I was hoping for something more entertaining -– a car would have been nice -- but in the event my Tru-Temper Rocket has served me honorably for more than forty years.
Whenever I shop for tools I look for that Made In The USA stamp and can almost always find it. Although most manufacturers are now offshore, some of their older products are still trickling out of warehouses, and they are worth the hunt. An American-made hammer, saw, or screwdriver enjoys a heft, a balance, a solidity that you just won’t see or feel or weigh in some shiny thing stamped out of scrap metal by Prisoner Chang before he was harvested for his lungs.
We don’t need another filmmaker, another cartoonist, another nasal thirty-something abusing a guitar, another book on existentialism, another advertiser. We just don’t need ‘em. But a man who can make you some shoes or plumb your house or build cabinets or make the electricity go – in him you've met a true artist.
Flavius: Thou art a cobbler, art thou?
Second Commoner: Truly, sir, all that I live by is with the awl. I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor women’s matters, but with awl. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes. When they are in great danger I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork.
-- Julius Caesar
Last week I had occasion to visit a shoemaker to have a pair of shoes re-soled and re-heeled, a practice common even a generation ago but now almost unheard of.
Shoes now come from slave factories in China, and when worn out are thrown away (“recycled”), as are redundant Chinese workers, not mended. China is now progressing in robotics to the point where one’s new leather shoes are perhaps not made by Prisoner Chang but of Prisoner Chang.
Most shoes look like cancerous mushrooms on steroids, but people are convinced by advertising that these blobs are cool because they are worn by some millionaire while he kills dogs or something. Looking for shoes that take a polish is now an adventure.
My cobbler is a smart young man who can discourse expertly on the merits of digital vs. film as media for recording images as well as on leather. He looked at my shoes and immediately knew the brand, the place of manufacture, and the eccentricities of the stitchery unique to the company who made the shoe.
His shop, marked appropriately by a wooden silhouette of a boot hanging from a chain, smelled of leather, wood, oils, and tools, all very much like The City Shoe Shop of happy memory.
And can you say “City Shoe Shop” over and over, really fast, without saying something naughty?
Nowhere was there any evidence of a computer in the cobbler’s shop; indeed, the only evidence of technology was the electric light. The tools were all hand tools, honest wood and iron, and the work bench was an archaeological site, worn and scratched and battered, among the litter of which history could be studied. And isn’t that the way art should be!
Here were no pixellated penguins, no electronic sermons yapping about my ideological failures, no preachments about why I should walk barefoot instead of killing a cow for shoes, no fashionable bottles of water, no body piercings, but rather that increasingly rare man, a real artisan pursuing his craft with his hands and his brain.
I am not nearly so gifted, but I can manage a bit of the rough carpentry I learned on the farm. Recently I felt the need to build some bookshelves. I have most of the tools I need for such small projects, including the hammer my father gave me for my 8th grade graduation for a summer of building fences. I was hoping for something more entertaining -– a car would have been nice -- but in the event my Tru-Temper Rocket has served me honorably for more than forty years.
Whenever I shop for tools I look for that Made In The USA stamp and can almost always find it. Although most manufacturers are now offshore, some of their older products are still trickling out of warehouses, and they are worth the hunt. An American-made hammer, saw, or screwdriver enjoys a heft, a balance, a solidity that you just won’t see or feel or weigh in some shiny thing stamped out of scrap metal by Prisoner Chang before he was harvested for his lungs.
We don’t need another filmmaker, another cartoonist, another nasal thirty-something abusing a guitar, another book on existentialism, another advertiser. We just don’t need ‘em. But a man who can make you some shoes or plumb your house or build cabinets or make the electricity go – in him you've met a true artist.
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