New York City. May, 2014. by Paul Goldfinger
There was a shoe repair shop in Rutherford, NJ. It smelled of leather and had all sorts of neat machinery for gluing, nailing, cutting and shining. The shoe repairman was Italian. He had an accent. But what really caught my attention was the music—he always had Italian opera playing on his radio. It was the only place where I ever heard opera, except for operettas, like those of Sigmund Romberg (eg the Student Prince) which my Mom played at home, and it taught me that you don’t need to be a sophisticate to like opera.
Those were the days when you could keep a pair of shoes going when they broke down. That was not a disposable world. My friend Frank’s father had a business in Clifton supplying materials to shoe repair shops. It was an all Italian business, like pizza parlors.
Of course now, you throw out a pair of sneakers even if the uppers are still OK, because the interior tends to break down. Tennis players sometimes get new tennis shoes every few weeks. And pizzas and bagels are made by everybody.
I had a part time job in high school working at Werner’s clothing store on Park Avenue in Rutherford. My job was to sell and stock shoes. The best ones were “ox blood” cordovans made by Florsheim. They sold for $25.00 a pair and were the most expensive shoe in the store. I always enjoyed selling a pair of those. They had to have a flawless shine at all times.
MARIO LANZA sings “Golden Days” from Sigmund Romberg’s “The Student Prince.”