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STORY & PHOTOS
STORY & PHOTOS
UNITY
When you walk into the rustic store, Cobbler’s Ranch Boot & Shoe Repair, just north of state Route 14 on state Route 165, owner Tony Lamia looks the part.
He’s adorned with a leather apron, gray beard and gives you the friendliest hello ever.
The fourth-generation cobbler still repairs and sews everything leather from the usual re-soling shoes to saddles to antique gun cases and just about anything else.
The boots, left on his doorstep that morning with a note, “I need them fixed quickly,” needed quite a bit of work.
Lamia, looking down at the worn and torn leather, says, “People love their boots and don’t bring ’em in till they are almost unfixable.” Lamia’s worn and hardened hands move ever so delicately over the stitched leather as he prepares the boots to get new heels and leave his shop, looking better than when they were new.
Lamia once worked for the stars — Jerry Lewis, Barbara Eden, Dom Deluise and even Andre the Giant, to name a few — but always has loved working on the dusty wooden floors of his quiet converted garage. Born into the business, his dad did it — as did his dad, as did his dad — and Lamia will no doubt do it till he dies. His grandfather was found hammer in hand at his bench when he died.
When Lamia isn’t saving soles, he loves to barbecue and take care of his menagerie of animals.
Like everyone else, he wonders what will happen — with all of the price increases and mass production — when those like him in the trade are gone. Boots will skyrocket in price, because no one will be around to make them go a couple more years.
Working slowly and methodically as he begins to remove the soles of another pair of shoes, Lamia wouldn’t have it any other way. He loves what he does, and it shows in every stitch and nail.