Patch It Paget

An aging cobblers struggles with changing times in a small Canadian town.

Patch It Paget

                Once upon a time on the straggling street of the small village of Tamworth lived Sam Paget, a shoemaker.  Since his boyhood Sam had  been a shoemaker having been taught the trade by his father who had been taught by his father, who had been taught by his father, who had been taught by his father, and so on back through distant generations  now lost to memory.  For three generations. Since  Sam’s grandfather, a wandering shoemaker had built a shop in the village, the Pagets had made footwear for the villagers and the nearby farmers

In Campbellford and Colbourne there were shoemakers who make fine boots for gentlemen, long tailored boots of the finest leather, ladies pumps laced with silk and gold thread.  None of such finery for the Pagets.  Wooden soled clogs and respectable Sunday go to meeting shoes, shoes made for hard  usage, for miners, shopkeepers and factory hands.  Ordinary, hardworking footwear for ordinary, hardworking people.

  Sam liked shoemaking.  The first sound that he could remember had been the tap, tapping, tapping of his father working on his bench.  Sam should have been a happy man.  He liked his life. He liked his village.  He loved his family, his wife, Evelyn, and two sons.  One fact however ate away at his happiness,  sapping his peace of mind.  Sam knew that he was a bad man.

                He had known this ever since he had been little.  His mother and father  had told him so.  Every time he had done something wrong, being late with a chore, not waking up early enough, they had told him that he was bad.  Who was he to argue with them.  His minister had told him that he was bad. when he did not look serious enough in church or erred in his Catechism  At six he went to school.  There he was told by his teacher that he was a stupid, bad person for being slow in his lesson, not that it mattered much.  What more could be expected from a shoemaker’s son.   His father told Sam not to worry.  As long as he knew his number to do his sums, as long as he could make out a bill of sale and read the Sunday paper, that was all that a shoemaker needed to know.  Once Sam finished his sixth year, father took him out of the school and placed him on a workbench to learn his trade.

                When Sam was nineteen he had thought of moving to Toronto, of taking a job in a factory.  His father had scoffed.  “Better a master then a hand.  You have your life here.  You need no better.”

                Sam had gone back to his bench.  Three days later his father and mother invited the village miller, James Paget, his wife Joan, and their daughter, Evelyn for tea.  Six months later  Sam and Evelyn had married. He could never quite understand why Evelyn had allowed him to become her husband.  There had been better lads aplenty.  Every time he looked in a mirror he saw a  tousle-haired . Drab looking man, pale and hunched over from too many hours on the work bench, hardly the type to hope to win a girl as pretty as Evelyn.  Once as they had waked over the moors surrounding the village.  Dressed in his Sunday suit of black broadcloth and a new bowler Sam felt awkward and stiff.  After an hour of walking and saying nothing he had worked up the courage to tell her that perhaps it would be better if she found a better man than he, someone wealthier and smarter.

                “A lady needs a man like that.”

She had smiled. “Do you love me, Sam” she had asked.”

He had reddened and looked away.

“Do you, Sam?”

“Aye.”

“Then there is no better man.”

After all these years Sam could still remember the blue silk flowers adorning her hat.

Two sons they had.  As he had watched his sons grow, Sam could see his own life stretching out before him.   At thirteen, Mathew and Mark left school and joined Sam in the shop. Some  day they,marry local lasses and surround their parents with grandchildren. 

“Better master then man” Sam would tell his sons.  Mathew and Mark  would smile and carry on with his work.

Then the war came. The war years had been good years for many shoemakers.  Contracts for army boots had gone out to many firms but not to Sam Paget.  His shop was too small for anyone to notice.  Still he made enough to keep his family.

Matthew fell at the Somme, Mark at Vimy Ridge. The winter the war ended Evelyn caught the Spanish flue and died in Sam’s arms.  What kind of a husband was he who could not protect his wife or his children.

After the war surplus boots flooded stores. Who needed handmade boots? Ten cents for laces, twenty cents for shoe polish, fifty cents for patching.

Fifteen years had passed. Sam, aging now, spent little time in his rooms, taking his meals and sleep there but preferring the shop.    Even if no one came in anymore at least he could watch the people pass.  He had given up going to Sunday service.  He knew that he should but could not bear the thought of sitting in an empty pew without Evelyn and his sons.  Anyway he would just there being reminded by God of how he had disappointed them.  Better just to stay home.

***

The little bell above Sam’s shop door tinkled.  Sam looked up from the hockey news in his newspaper.  He had had two customers in the morning.  One had bought a pair of laces, the other some black shoe polish.  It was now mid-afternoon.  This could be a busier day than yesterday he thought.  During the past few years he had thought of giving up the business, of renting out the shop, but these days, who would want it?  For five years depression had stalked the land.  Both Bennet and King had promised that they would make it go away. Liars, both.  At least he was luckier then some.  He had his own home.  His needs were simple enough.  Small as his earnings were they kept him warm and fed.

His brother, Nathanial, had written him from Trenton urging him to sell the shop and move in with him.  Sam had declined. Better a master then a hand, he had written back.

The man stood at the door.  In his right hand he held a paper bag. Dressed in an old grey cap, frayed plaid jacket and thin gloves, he spoke of poverty.  Sam was not surprised.  Five years into a depression, who di d not?  He tried to remember who the man was.  Johnson, Ed Johnson.  He owned a small dairy farm out by Roseneath.

Johnson nodded at him. “Mister Paget.”  He placed the bag on Sam’s counter.

“What can I do for you, Mister Johnson?”

From out of the bag Johnson drew out a pair of work  boots.  “Can you patch them?”

Sam picked up one of the boots.  The heels had been worn down to the soles, the soles were paper thin.

“Maybe.  I could make you a new pair.”

“How much?”

“Ten dollars.”

The farmer frowned.  “What about patching?”

“A dollar for the pair.”

Johnson thought for a moment weighing his need for a new pair of boots against his other expenses. “Better just patch them  then.”

Sam took another look at the boots.  Seven years had passed since he had made a new pair of boots and that had been for himself.  Since then, “just patch it” had been all that he had heard.  He had even nicknamed himself Patch It Paget.  Soon  he would have to retire, close up the shop.  Then what would he do?  He thought of when he and Evelyn on the hills above Tamworth when they and the world had been young.  Now  he was just  an old man patching worn out shoes.

In the farmer’s eyes and words he could sense the same look of defeat that he had first seen in his own when Evelyn had died.  He had been in his fifties then.  Johnson was still in his thirties.

He took off his spectacles and brushed his eyes in thought.  He recalled his father telling him, “better master then man.” He then put his spectacles back on.  “Suppose I did do a new pair, how much can you afford?”

Johnson’s back stiffened.  “I don’t take charity.”

“Who said anything about charity?  Haven’t made boots in years. A man doesn’t practice his trade, he loses it.  You know that.  Hell, you’d be doing me a favour.  How much can you pay?”

Johnson thought for a moment.  well, if you put it like that, five dollars maybe.”  He placed a wrinkled, faded dollar bill on the counter. ”On account.”

 Sam nodded and wrote down Johnson’s name.  He then handed Johnson a receipt. “Come back next week.”

***  

A week after leaving his work boots with Sam Paget, Ed Johnson drove back into Tamworth, his nine year old Ford Pick Up chugging through the blowing snow.  To keep warm he had pulled on an extra pair of socks but could still feel the cold seeping through his shoes. Inside his billfold were four one dollar bills he had put aside for Paget.  On the seat beside him was a brown wicker basket in which  Ed’s wife Janet had placed two freshly baked loaves of bread and a small apple pie for Sam.  Ed pulled up in front of Sam’s store.  Basket in his  left hand he stepped out of the  car onto the snow covered sidewalk.

He tried to open the door to find it locked.  Stamping his feet, Ed knocked at the door.  Getting no answer he stepped into the next building, a tiny three table eatery, Sally’s Diner. 

There were no patrons in the diner just the owner, Sally Forbes,  an overweight, middle-aged woman in a gray dress.  She looked up from wiping the counter.

“Cup of coffee.” Sam  placed a dime on the counter and sat down on a stool.  He waited for the woman to bring the coffee.  “Where’s Sam Paget?” he asked.

“Sam? He died two days ago.”

“Died?”

“Yeah. Maud McClellan, she come in to get her Sunday shoes fixed. Found him sitting in his chair. Dead as a doorknob he was.  Poor Maud, she had to go to Campbellford to get her shoes fixed.”

“Sorry to hear that. Look,I left a pair of boots with him.  How am I supposed to get them?”

“I hear that Sam’s brother is coming up from Trenton tomorrow.  Maybe you can talk to him?”

“I got to get back home tonight. “   Ed felt angry with both Sam and with himself.  He had lost a dollar and his old boots and would likely have to spend money on a new pair.

 Sally thought for a moment. “You could see Doctor Jameson”

“Why?”

“He’s got the keys to Sam’s place.”

Following Sally’s directions Ed walked two blocks up the street to a two-storied red brick house.  On the fence in surrounding the house was hung a sign that informed him that here was the home and office of   Doctor David Jameson.

Ed stepped into Doctor Jameson’s tiny waiting room.

Doctor Jameson, his bald forehead fringed by a collar of white hair, looked up when his secretary told him that a Mister Johnson wished to see him.

Ed had never liked visiting doctors.  They cost money and they always brought bad news.  Cap in his left hand he stood at the doorway of the doctor’s office.

Doctor Jameson rose from his chair.  “Come in Mister Johnson.  Thought you might come.  You’re looking for a pair of boots?”

“Yes sir?  How did you know?”

The doctor swivelled around in his chair and opened a cupboard. From it he pulled out Ed’s old work boots and a brown parcel.

“There was an old  pair of boots sitting on the counter in Sam’s place.  Guess those are yours.”

Ed nodded. The doctor held up the parcel. “Next to them was this. It has your name on them.”

Sam opened the parcel.  Inside  was the finest piece of boot making that Johnson had ever seen.  He had seen and worn enough work boots in his life to judge a good pair from a bad pair.  From the thickness of the soles, the quality of the leather, the detailed cross stitching, and the felt lining the interior of each boot he judged them to be the finest he had ever seen.

“How much did you pay for them?” the doctor asked.

“Five dollars.”

“You did well.”

“I gave him a dollar on account.  I still owe him four.” John placed four dollars on the doctor’s desk.  “You see that Sam’s brother gets that.”  He placed the basket on the doctor’s desk. “You see that his brother gets that too.  My wife and I, we thought we owed Sam that.”

The doctor pulled away the cloth covering the interior of the basket and looked inside.  Returning the cloth he pushed the blanket back towards Ed. “Keep it. His brother doesn’t need it. You give it back to your wife and children.”

Ed hesitated.  He considered the doctor’s logic, nodded and picked up the boots.

 “What did Sam die of?”  

“Heart failure, but that was only part of it. Man lived on tea, porridge, bread and jam.  I don’t think he had a solid meal in months. Hard thing, growing old alone.”

Ed nodded, wished the doctor a good day and stepped outside. 

As he walked backed to his car he asked why Sam simply had not reduced his prices years before.  Pride he supposed.  How would he feel having to sell his farm for only a few dollars.  Boot making for Sam Paget was what farming was to Ed.  How could he give it up?

He placed  the basket and boots on the passenger seat and climbed into the truck.  The engine kicked into life. Ed waited a moment allowing the truck to warm and the wipers to clear away the snow.  As he waited he glanced sat the parcel and thought of the old man working away, not for money but for pride.  He patted the parcel  and then began the long drive home.

 

Kicking Up Dust   Amazon Press

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Canadian English