The love song of Cyrus and James Clark
All right. I am just going to admit it. This brief column will have little to do with Martha’s Vineyard and everything to do with my pair of Clark’s Desert Boots. Quit now if this does not interest you whatsoever.
In all fairness to my publisher, I will add that I visited The Cobbler Shop in Vineyard Haven, an institution on the island. Indeed, it is the institution–the only cobbler on Martha’s Vineyard since 1920. My questions and more importantly my beloved boots were tended to by one Mr. Spain, but The Cobbler Shop is owned by Nancy MacMullen who in January of last year reopened her basement workshop after closing the shop’s doors in order to give her breast cancer diagnosis the proper time and treatment. Now, Ms. MacMullen is once again in good health, and together with her colleague Darry Spain, they will repair their most important pair of soles yet. I hope.
I twitched and grimaced when Mr. Spain told me that crepe soles that come on Desert Boots like mine aren’t what they used to be anymore. Maybe a Vibram sole? The thought of tampering with the integrity of my trusty leather steeds unnerved me. He took my phone number–and my beloveds–and assured me that he’ll do some snooping.
Now, my Clark’s have taken a serious pounding in the two plus years I have worn them. They have trod in, across, and around: snow, ice, rain, sunshine, sand, snow, mud, Michigan, Massachusetts, Arizona, California, New York, Connecticut, Ohio, snow, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Morocco, Spain, SNOW, Ireland, England, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oregon, Washington D.C., Kansas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska. I think. They have come to contour my feet in the same way that a 10-year-old spring mattress becomes less of a mattress and more of an open casket. They are beat to hell, and look better than the day I bought them. They are the flappy, formless champions of airport security–they flop right off, they slide back on. Our lives are but a search for that pair of shoes that actually makes our feet feel nice after a day’s journey. Well, my Desert Boots aren’t that shoe–it doesn’t exist–but they are as close as I’ll ever come.
So here’s to Darry, Nancy and The Cobbler Shop: save my boots, my one constant in a life of unpredictable movement.
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