Meet the cobbler keeping Stratford on its feet
It turns out that mending shoes is as good for the heart, as it is the sole.
David Deacon operates a small shop called Scarpa’s Shoes, which smells like leather and wax and has machines that have been going for more than a century, in the heart of Stratford.
At 74, David can’t remember how long he’s been fixing and selling shoes – somewhere around the 22-year mark. He tried to retire once, and only once, but it didn’t work out. Keeping busy is important for longevity, he says.
‘‘When people get past 65, they don’t know what to do with themselves, and then they die.’’
Attached to the walls of Deacon’s shop are pictures of Skyhawks and Hercules – a reminder of his decades in the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
He ended up doing office work and ‘‘hated it, but it had to be done’’.
After leaving the air force he and his wife bought a fish and chip shop, but it didn’t work out, so he bought a small shoe business.
‘‘At the time I knew nothing about shoes.’’
The father of the man who was selling the business came in and showed Deacon the ropes for a few weeks, and he spent some time learning in a shoe shop down south.
Deacon inspects my shoes – Hush Puppies, bought from a generic shoe store.
‘‘They only use a thin strip of glue on those ones,’’ he says, before moving on to my colleague’s Dr. Martens – which were much more interesting to him.
He finds out they’re made in China. Quite a few of the shoes he stocks are also made in the People’s Republic.
‘‘There are Chinese made, and then there are Chinese made,’’ he says, pointing to a pair of shoes still in the box.
‘‘These here are made in China to American standards, very rigorous. That’s a good quality sole.’’
Soles are important in the shoe business.
Deacon says ‘‘all sorts of people’’ come into his store.
‘‘Often just for a chat. It breaks up the day.’’
Like the small, wiry man who wanders in carrying a white sunflower in a reusable shopping bag.
‘‘This is for you David,’’ he beams. ‘‘It will bring in the women.’’
The man, Siegfried Bauer, explains that he’s an ex-marathon runner, although he’s since ‘‘cured himself of that mental illness’’.
He jokes with Deacon for a while before handing out his number and a sheet detailing his fastest runs – he holds the record for running around Mt Taranaki he says.
While he shows us the tools of his trade, Deacon loops back to the reason he tried to retire.
His wife passed away 10 years ago. She had cancer.
‘‘After that, I came back to the shop. It’s something to do, you meet people and I think I provide a good service.’’
A lot of that service seems to focus on the people who slip through the gaps in the fast fashion shoe market.
A woman brings in a pair of shoes. She’d tried getting them fixed elsewhere, but they still hurt her heel.
Deacon takes a heat gun to it, then taps it a few times with a hammer, she tries the shoe on and it feels much better.
He does that job for free.
‘‘I’ve got low overheads, no staff to pay. I help keep prices down for people.’’
Some of his customers are older people looking for something comfortable that will last, others with swollen feet need their shoes extended.
At one point the shop gets so busy one of his customers wonders if he’s having a closing down sale. Deacon just laughs.
‘‘I’m not planning on it any time soon.’’
‘‘I’ve got low overheads, no staff to pay. I help keep prices down for people.’’ David Deacon
Scarpa’s Shoes