Got Story? Taking a Walk With Makers Who Know Their Story

A bootpal reminds me that most don’t want a prolix philosopher’s ramble but a get-to-the-point review.  Most are looking for help with the hard stuff, especially fit and quality.  The meaning of life is not usually on the list even when there is interest in matters of history and provenance.

I might lose you but I’m going here anyway.

The readers of the great Patrick O’Brian have long commented that his first novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series, 1969’s Master and Commander is perhaps too much action, too strapping and overly masculine.  His follow up, Post Captain, develops the principal characters, introduces their love interests and a host of interesting female characters, but as some critics would have it, too internalized, too much psychological study and not enough action.  Arguably, O’Brian arrives at near perfection in his third novel, H.M.S. Surprise where both compelling action and the deeper examination of the human condition are developed with minor characters included.

 

Had O’Brian chosen the “action novel” with fewer digressions into the technicalities of 19th century square-rig sailing and fewer references to Locatelli and Boccherini, he may well have won more readers at the outset.  But methinks the journey would have never truly risen past “historical naval fiction” and into the realms of genuine literature.  Had he not dared to digress into his own deep personal curiosities, like botany, zoology, navigation, and then, yes, the complexities of human heart, we would not still be writing about him as we are.  We remember the great books and the exquisite writing but it is a depth of sentiment that invites re-readings.  The stories are compelling because character, relationship, and all that stirs, provokes, awakens, and arouses life to pursue meaning through storms and blue sea sailing is right before our eyes.

 

In no way do I compare myself writing about boots or denim or leather---all conceits of personal vainglory---to O’Brian’s accomplishments.  I mean merely to strain our imaginations with the notion that writing about the things we love can be more than action scenes of our own historical novels on Instagram.

We seek the relevant information regarding boot lasts, clicking, comparative evaluations, the important retailor opportunities, and pricing.  We want the material details of fabric and leather making.  But do we dare to think about how such vainglorious gasconade and self-flattery chances the contemplation of values, motives, even passion itself?

If that interrogative strikes you as better left rhetorical and resolved by pictures worth more than a thousand words then you will at best scan for my weak Joe Friday Just the Facts, Ma’am moments under review.  But truth is, most of the facts about these things are documented by their makers and sellers, and the subjective reviews that detail “better and worse” I shall leave to others.

Better boot makers proudly tell you about their past, as well they should, but few wax long in prose or poetry over what their boots can mean to those who own---or inherit them.  When someone dares to burnish and risk hard won reputations to tell you more about why they do what they do in craft and business, I think we should take notice. 

 

It’s one thing for us fanboys to scream from the rafters or murmur in dulcet tones.  I too love your YouTube review videos and InstaReels in favour of our champions.

 

But when our favorite paladins of creativity make their own case for a narrative, a story with meaning, an evocative tale that links their work to their vision of life, their craft and artistry---when they offer up their own personal Elysium?  That is noteworthy.

 

I have two such instances in mind that recently drew notice.  The first is from a maker whose work I have not yet enjoyed personally but from afar.  J.D. Gabbard’s compelling journey to become a one-person bespoke boot maker was recently featured in a public conversation on the Stichdown Shoecast Podcast.  Gabbard’s Kreosote brand is nothing short of stunning and he has plenty of ideas about boot making, its history, and how it all speaks to deeper matters of identity and personhood.  His website tells us that he is “Inspired by my Kinfolk’s Era of American Heritage Storytelling.”

 

On the Stitchdown Shoecast Gabbard proffered a history of the engineer boot, closely linked as it likely is to Lord Wellington, riding boots from ages past, and the close connection between utility and every wearer’s own ersatz Garcia-Lorca notions of duende.  Okay, so I added the bit about Garcai-Lorca and duende, but bear with me.  

Lemme put this simply: you don't just wear your Engineers because they suit the job or fit well all day.  You also wear them for how they make you feel.  You may not admit to any further narrative or even dismiss the suggestion of anything more because, you know, real men don’t really have feelings much less talk about them.  But where there are Engineers,  I tell you, there is the pursuit of duende.  And Gabbard, he’s got duende in spades.

 

Gabbard revels in shadow and outliers.  He has had a rich, complicated past from what he tells us, and boot making has not been his only life-long pursuit so much as it has brought him to reckoning with himself.  He all but says as much when he talks about his journey, his marriage, his decision to work alone.  I am hoping he forgives me if this interpretation somehow presumes too much or fails to register with his own perception.  Part of writing about these boots to interpret them and their maker. 

Now the word duende literally in Spanish and Portuguese means something like a ghost, demon, or supernatural visitor, thus the contraction, duen de casa from dueño de casa or “owner of the house.” Knock, knock. Who’s there?  And alas that is the question.  Not only what is there and what do you make but who is there in the things you make.  Gabbard’s boots are surely an extension of himself, he working out his demons, in a good way, and his boots look to me like the owner of the house is in every bit of their making.  

 

Gabbard is also a rather accommodating bespoke maker so he is happy to try to put some of your ghost in his boots too.  Every order usually entails a long conversation.  I hope my day will come. 

 

The core of duende is not about ghosts so much as it is, as our poet Garcia-Lorca suggests, an intimation of any passion’s pursuit, inspiration associating with danger, death, renewal, and the audacity and atmospheric darkness that permits mystery and abjures inauthenticity.

When once I discussed duende with the late Dario Pegoretti, whose special genius in bicycle building made his work the choice of some of road cycling’s greatest champions, he spoke about a relentless, sometime sleepless desire to have a life of soulfulness.  Dario painted by hand some of his last work and while he would ask what you like, he was going to do what he was going to do.  He offered you a taste of his duende and I know that made a difference to me.

When I listened to Gabbard, I heard him speaking like the Spanish dancer who knows it is possible to make the dance and the audience, on the right occasion, feel the duende together.  Gabbard’s dark intensity reminded me of Pegoretti who had the intrepidity to bear his soul in his work and offer it without compromise.  How do you please others who commission your work and still remain true to yourself, to your vision and steadfast inner aspiration?  For Gabbard it seems to me it his duende that serves him best.  We are the beneficiaries.

 

The second cordwainer recently to bare some soul for us was Minoru Matsuura, renown for the work of his Brass Shoe Repair and Product’s Clinch brand boots.  Since he opened his own shop in 2008, Matsuura-san evolved from high-end shoe repair to the building of boots so in demand that grown men set their alarms for their release in the hope of scoring a pair.

Need we say more about just how beautiful and beautifully made Clinch boots are?  Is it wrong to say I swoon at this work, be it repair or new examples, even at my advanced age?

 

But what I am choosing to review today are not my Clinch Engineers or Yeager lace-up boots in black horsebutt.  I might opine that I have rarely owned anything more satisfying.

 

I draw our attention to the recent 11 minute and 53 second short featured now on YouTube entitled “The inherited shoes - Brass Shoe Co. / CLINCH BOOTS & SHOES.”  Since premiering on December 21, 2021 it has garnered a modest 1,978 views, which makes me wonder if YouTube doesn’t count repeat viewings since I may have watched it at least 25 times.  Yeah.  For reals.

The comment from Brass Shoes Co. along with credits below says, “I hope this movie will show you how wonderful to keep using the product while repairing.”  In addition, “This movie shows -・Vamp leather replacement ・Rebuild to half size bigger last.”   Just in case we aren’t quite sure what to do with the film’s suggestion that inheriting your beloved grandpa’s shoes can make a deep connection, we learn that walking in his shoes can be transformed just enough so that they can become your shoes.  A few expert changes, practically speaking, will do the trick.  But of course that hardly seems to be the point.  

 

The film features Logan, who walking into his recently passed Grandpa’s trailer shows us a perfect kind of vintage dishevelment.  Well-worn chairs and a stove, a beautiful lugged steel bicycle, and then his coming upon Grandpa’s boots, evocative with stories of memory and relationship.  There’s a Clinch box, boots on top, then a kind of flashback including regrets of his own childish indoor pursuits and Grandpa’s mild admonishments to play outside.

We’re told how Grandpa used his valued possessions again and again, repaired them---and we ask ourselves how many things do we own that get better with use and are nowadays things we really want to repair rather than replace?  Perhaps a familiar lesson in values here but not one we should pass over.

We’re given a moment in which to see ourselves in every character, maybe even in the boots themselves and the playful swagger of the UPS driver who picks up and redelivers post-repair.

We see Misuura-san repairing the shoes but not replacing the worn box---for that holds in its patina some of Grandpa too. The repair work is made to look almost anodyne but I wonder if the plate of clinch nails isn’t also a metaphor for fastening and making one’s own the kind of relationship that Logan wants to sustain for the rest of his life, walking in Grandpa’s boots.

The refurbished boot is, of course, masterfully done and when Matsuura-san carefully inspected and placed the boots back in the box I knew he wanted to be as much a part of the story as he was their maker and repairer.  Brass doesn’t only make boots, they invite us to make stories worth sharing.

Of course, the job was done right, including a half-size stretch. but its meaning is as much the point.  Logan says, “I hope by wearing these boots his spirit will live on…”, then thanking Brass as the conclusion of his letter requesting repair, the credits roll.

 

Okay, so maybe the music is a little schmaltzy and the sentiment a bit bathetic.  But don’t tell me that you aren’t soppy about your boots more than just a little.  Or that the sentiment of this short film fails its mark.

 

How do we decide to make the things we own into our story?   How can something like our boots speak to relationships and memories, values and ideals?   All of that is made unequivocal as if to say, it’s okay, you have permission to feel human when you wear your boots and tell your stories.