Alex Shoe Repair

“When I started working here, I was young. It was fun. But then the fun turned different, serious. We’re here at seven in the morning. For 37 years, every day, at 7 o’clock. So long a time!” Ermione tells me.

In a world of three-year job-jumpers, the sign in Ermione and Danny Pevhany’s Roncesvalles storefront catches the eye: “After 52 years serving you at this location, Alex Shoe Repair will close on January 31, 2004. Thank you for your business.”

Danny walks slowly into view from behind stacks of shoes. He repairs my belt as we talk. “My father Spiro and I bought the business from the original owner more than 50 years ago. We kept his name since that’s how everybody knew the shop.”

“You see that machine over there?” Danny nods to an aging lathe-like contraption. “It’s as old as the business itself. It must be 100 years old – the original business was here more than 40 years before we were.”

A customer walks in. “How is everything?”

Ermione replies: “Oh, fine, you know. Work, always work. Almost Christmas.”

“I know, I know. Merry Christmas.”

Ermione joined Danny in matrimony and business 37 years ago, upon her arrival from Greece. “For many years, we used to be really busy. I couldn’t sit down to talk to you,” she tells me.

“Shoes aren’t made to be repaired any more,” Danny says. “They’re different now. Nothing sticks to them. You need the equipment shoe makers have. If I could afford that equipment, I’d be making shoes, not fixing them.”

“Who wants to do shoe repair? Long hours, hard work, not much money – the kids want better jobs.”

Another customer walks up to Ermione. “How’s your granddaughter?”

“I’ll show you a picture.”

“Oh my! She looks so grown up! She’s changed so much since I baby-sat her!”

The more garrulous of the two, Ermione continues. “I love it here. Lots of Polish people here. We’re Greek. Greek and Polish people, we’re the same. We understand each other.”

How do you close down a 52-year-old business? “Coffee and cookies,” Ermione says. “My daughter said: ‘You need to do something on your last day in business.’ So we do coffee and cookies.”

“We’re giving away our remaining stock to the Salvation Army,” Danny says. “We’re taking home the model cars, the Leaf posters, some postcards. The postcards, they’re my son’s old collection. Collectors see these old postcards, they snap them up.”

“I’ll miss lots of things. My friends. My lovely customers. You meet many people here.” Ermione takes off her glasses to wipe her eyes. “You don’t know them all by name, but you know their faces.”

“It’s time to go. That’s my decision,” she quietly says. “I’ll enjoy whatever God gives me. Stay home. Go shopping. Visit my kids and grandkids.”

This spring, Alex Shoe Repair will turn into a bike shop. “The new renter wants to keep some of the old machinery in the store,” Danny says.

I look at the lathe again. Not much use for fixing bikes, I figure. It’s a relic now. A reminder of vanishing eras, changing times.

Originally published here

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