Transcript

Location: Ferris Shoe Repair, corner of Clinton and Caledonia St.

Joan Ferris:  I’m looking at the building on the corner of Caledonia Street. That was Ferris shoe repair. My grandfather came over from Syria. He had a shoe repair, and he died in his fifties and left my grandmother with eight children to support. So the kids, at a very young age, had to take over, and my father ended up branching out and opening his own, and that’s how that one got there.

There’s a very distinct smell from the shoe polish, sanding of soles and from all the pure leather. It takes a lot to clean that place, and that was actually my first job. Was cleaning the blower where all the stuff from the shoes suctioned into this big bag for twenty-five cents an hour. That sounds low, but at the time, that was 1971, I think? You could get like a whole pop in potato chips for a quarter, so it was actually kind of a lot of money at that time. I think I was eight years old. Unfortunately, that’s a craft that’s dying out and there’s only one shoe repair left in town, and after that’s gone, I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s really sad that La Crosse isn’t going to have that. And I think that’s kind of the way of the world, that it’s not something that’s as common anymore to save your soles, so to speak.

My name is Joan Ferris, and I’m co-owner of Lovechild restaurant in downtown La Crosse.