| An
unlikely pair behind the table at Boots'N'Things in
Richmond
By Stephanie Hebert
April 17, 2008 | The sign sitting
outside the shop tells visitors the times the shop is
open for business and at the bottom the sign reads “We
are always here unless we’re not.”
This sign is found at Boots’N’Things,
in Richmond, at 56 North 400 west. To find the shop
you have to go on a little adventure. Turn west at the
only traffic light in Richmond, then turn north at 400
west and the shop is on the east side of the street
across from an old barn that has seen it’s share of
springs, winters, summers, and falls.
Boots’N’Things is the last shoe repair
shop in Cache Valley. When Lloyd Walker opened the shop
there were six shoe repair shoes in Cache Valley. As
a matter of fact Walker said, “There was always a grocery
store, shoe repair shop, and a barber shop on nearly
every block in a Mormon town.”
Shoe and leather repair are a dying
art. Instead of repairing shoes or equipment people
just go buy new shoes, or equipment, and “they are made
for that,” Walker said.
Not only is the art of working with
leather a dying art but supplies are getting harder
to come by. For example the suppliers that Boots’N’Things
bought their leather soles, thread, and leather dye
all closed because the markets are moving overseas.
The European markets are selling their products for
less then the American Markets and these specialized
industries can not afford to compete with the European
market.
Being the last shoe cobbler in Cache
Valley Boots’N’Things has plenty of business. So much
so that Walker and his partner, Chris Apedaile, don’t
need to advertise.
When you step into the shop you are
transported back in time by the smell of leather, glue,
and a little horse sweat mixed together. It is as if
somehow time has stopped in the shop in the bygone era
where a man was only as good as his horse, and everyone
carried a gun to defend his property, his stock, and
his family from interlopers.
Transported back to a time where
equipment had to be kept in tip top shape because lives
depended on it. You couldn’t be out miles from town,
riding the range, checking a herd of cows and have the
leather on your saddle rip, or be plowing a field and
have your harness snap. At Boots’N’ Things, equipment,
whether it is a saddle or a pair of shoes, is tended
to as if lives still depend on it.
The first thing you see when you
enter the shop, is a large table that takes up most
of the front half of the shop, only leaving enough room
on either side of the table wide enough to accommodate
one person. The table holds bridles, halters, pieces
of leather, and various spare buckles, snaps, and hooks.
Most of which had tags attached to remind everyone who
they belong to and the work that needs to be done to
them.
As your eyes wonder to the walls
around the table you see saddles resting on saddles
stands, chaps, bridles, gun holsters, spurs, belts,
and pictures of horses hanging on the walls. There is
no wasted space in this shop.
It takes about 60 hours to complete
a saddle from scratch Walker explained. That is your
basic saddle without much decoration. Saddles are decorated
in Boots’N’Things with various adornments, like the
conches, and hand punches, which look like awls used
in wood work except that each tip is a different pattern.
The tips are not much bigger then the eraser of a pencil,
so to tool a saddle skirt, a gun holster, or a pair
of chaps adds countless hours to the various creations
in the shop. Each punch made to the leather is done
with a hammer so you can manipulate how deep you want
the pattern to go into the leather. There are endless
varieties of ways to decorated leather with punches
and no two saddles in the shop are the same.
Once you have absorbed the front
of the shop you notice the back of the shop which again
has a table in the middle of the room, smaller then
the table in the front of the shop. This table is covered
with tools, shoes, thread, and various spare parts as
well. Around the parameter of this half of the shop
you find grinders, sewing machines, a large leather
punch for punching out large pieces of leather for saddles
almost like a cookie cutter for leather, and more tools
called punches for decorating saddles in a process called
tooling.
Walker has been doing leather work
for over 40 years. He started Boots’N’Things during
the years that he was teaching middle school. He would
be at school until three in the afternoon and would
then work in the shop until midnight.
“I thing it’s good to have
a vocation. It’s good to be able to do something other
than teach school or be a journalist. It’s good to have
something you can do with your hands; it sure makes
a difference in your life, in quality of life. Your
not just caught in one lane of thought or one main endeavor,
the more you can broaden your horizons, the more intrinsic
becomes the value of your education, and so you want
to broaden that out so you can encompass a lot of things
and understand a lot about a lot things,” Walker said
as he was working on a pair of cowboy boots. For example
Walker said, “You may never see another boot in your
life torn apart, but you have seen it today. So it gives
you a better idea how a boot is made and gives you something
to look for when you go find a boot.”
Walker also said that people need
to become careful of “becoming narrow in life and missing
what’s on the edges.”
On the flip side Walker believes
that everyone should be able to read a good book and
know why it is a good book.
“Knowledge is great I don’t
care what it is the more you know the better you mind
is,” Walker said, knowledge “feeds on itself” and grows
exponentially.
Due to some health problems Walker
sold the shop to his partner Chris Apediale about two
years ago. Walker and Apediale are an unlikely pair.
The tables in the shop are set so high for Walker’s
stature that Apediale has a stool pushed under them
for easy access just so she can get her elbows above
the table when she is working.
“I didn’t think I was coming
back,” Walker said “She was a blessing in my life, and
we just kind of grew together.”
Before working the shop with Walker,
Apediale had not had any experience working with leather.
However Apediale has a unique skill of her own that
helped to bring these two together. Apediale braids
horse hair and leather into key chains, belts, hat bands,
and reins. Walker became aware of her talent through
his daughter whom Apediale had braided a key chain and
Walker wanted a pair of reins. So in exchange for the
reins Apedaile wanted to learn some of his skills and
Walker agreeded.
Apediale said of her experience with
Walker teaching her leather work, “He allows you to
make your mistakes and that’s how we learn. He’ll teach,
let you make your mistakes, then go ask a question and
he’ll kind of smile like ‘OK now your ready to learn’,
I bet he was a fantastic teacher because the allowed
the kids to learn, and he allowed them make mistakes.”
So shoe cobblers and leather repair
shops may be hard to find but these two will be out
in Richmond tinkering in their little shop as long as
health and finances allow. “I’m trying to keep the tradition
alive,” Apediale said, “I living some history.”
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