89-year icon ends: Cobbler Shoppe closes its doors
By Frank Ruggiero

After 89 years of serving the feet of the High Country, the Cobbler Shoppe has soled its last shoe.

And despite the store’s closing Thursday afternoon, owner Jane Meyers spent her evening delivering shoes customers had yet to pick up. It’s the kind of quality, down-to-earth, if not now nostalgic, service that came to be associated with the Cobbler Shoppe and others of its kind.

There are no others of its kind in the High Country anymore; the closest shoe repair store is in Hickory. And the numbers are dwindling.

The store itself opened in 1916 on King Street in Boone, later moving to Appalachian Street with a change of ownership, and finally to Shoppes at Shadowline under Meyers’ ownership. She has owned and run the Boone staple for 15 years now, though she’s been in the cobbler business for more than 40 years.

“I’ve just been in this business all my life,” she said, leaning against a counter cluttered with boxes and tools of the trade.

Meyers doesn’t blame the business’s demise on customers, but rather the world’s major shoe manufacturers. She’s dubbed today’s society a “throw-away society,” as manufacturers mass produce shoes never intended for repair. When such shoes have been worn to the sole, people tend to simply throw the pair away and seek another.

“You can’t blame it on the people, but the companies make shoes with synthetic material that can’t be repaired,” Meyers said. “The companies would rather they buy new shoes.”

Today’s shoes, many of which proudly boast “leather” on their tags, can be deceiving, Meyers continued.

“A lot of shoes say ‘leather upper,’ and sometimes the only part that’s leather is the lining on the tongue,” she said, adding that while some shoes claim to be made in America, they’re actually assembled elsewhere.

Throughout her years in the business, Meyers has seen shoes “come and go and come back again twice.”

“I’ve had people come in here with shoes that people have had for 40 years and resoled and resoled again,” Meyers said.

Though Meyers saw her fair share of odd customer requests, shoemaker Benny Singley saw the brunt of it.

“Benny has put golf soles on cowboy boots, as well as bedroom slippers — that one was to save a marriage,” Meyers said.

A lot can be told through a person’s shoes - call it sole-searching, if you will. Meyers recalls an instance when she, her late husband, Mark Meyers, and Singley operated a shoe repair store in Miami, Fla., and a young couple arrived to pick up a pair of shoes.

The girlfriend entered the store, while her other half lingered outside. Her eyes narrowed when she noticed her boyfriend’s shoes had a sort of green fuzz stuck to the bottom, and Meyers recalls the young lady storming out of the store to begin pounding the shoes over her boyfriend’s head, yelling, “You said you’d never go back to her apartment again!”

A week later, the boyfriend returned to the store, and smugly thanked Meyers for ruining the relationship.

Needless to say, though, there were many happier customers, particularly in the High Country.

“They’re sad about this,” Meyers said of her customers. “They’ve really been so sweet. They’ve been bringing me bread and cookies and cake. I’m really going to have to go on a diet.”

Meyers will miss the store, and the trade, calling it a “very reputable and good business.”

“And it’s a needed business,” she added. “We did everything from shortening purse strings to orthopedic prescriptions.”

The Cobbler Shoppe offered handbag and backpack repairs, resoled hiking boots, filled orthopedic prescriptions, repaired zippers and even Birkenstocks.

The massive machine that Singley sat by for years took seven hours to be removed from the store, and was then laid to rest, Meyers said.

Meyers sees this as a sign of the times, when nobody seems to be interested in continuing the trade. She had wanted to teach the ropes - or laces, in this case - to someone who could have kept the sinking trade afloat, but no one would bite.

Meyers enlisted the help of the JobLink Career Center at the Watauga County Employment Security Commission and invested more than $5,000 in advertising. She even visited correctional institutes to try to interest inmates.

“No one wants to do it,” she said. “So, like Farmers Hardware’s situation, the Cobbler Shoppe era is over.”

Meyers it not yet certain what she’ll do with her free time, but Singley will remain in town, now operating a booth on weekends at the Wildcat Flea Market.

Meyers doesn’t seem bitter, but rather thankful for the community that embraced her, her husband and Singley like family.

“It’s a very endearing community, and they embraced us well,” she said. “I think it was because I was never ashamed of anything that went out that door. We thank them for a fun run — it really was. We hope we made everyone happy, and we tried.”

• Frank Ruggiero may be contacted at ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com.