One day as I was walking down the hall at work, I noticed that the echo of my steps sounded funny. There was a tinny, hollow sound whenever my right foot hit the floor. So, once I was back at my desk, I sat down and crossed my right leg over my other knee and found the culprit: the bottom had broken off the heel of my nearly brand-new boot.
Later that day my boss gave me a tip: a local store, Brown’s Shoes, employs Amish who will pick up broken shoes and work on them. Plus, my boss added, the repairs cost next to nothing. There was just one catch: “I’ve dropped off shoes that took so long,” she said, “that when they finally called to tell me they were ready, I’d actually forgotten all about them.”
Still, I decided it was worth a shot. I could be patient, I told myself.
So, one chilly fall day when I was running other errands, I stopped into Browne’s and asked the young man at the counter if it I could leave my busted boot for an Amish repairman. “Just so you know,” he said, “it takes a long time.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m not getting to wear them, anyway, just sitting there broken, so it’s no problem.”
“Okay,” he said, with a discernible note of “suit yourself.”
I left the store feeling proud of my resourcefulness. Virtuous, even, for saving one more thing from going into a landfill, for providing work for a local sustainable community. Or something like that.
Perhaps now is the time to mention that I dropped the boot off sometime before Thanksgiving.
Today, it’s March 24, and it’s almost time to swap boots and socks for sandals.
In my tiny, cluttered bedroom, the lone in-tact black boot sits atop the window air conditioner that I’ve been meaning to move down to the basement since September (guess I might as well leave it there now.) I scurry around in the mornings, searching for the right earrings or scarf or sweater, and I’ll notice that black boot just sitting there, taunting me.
Every time I see it, I think, “I need to call the store and ask if there’s any chance they have it ready for me.” I even rationalize: “Maybe they lost my phone number.”
But just when I’ve decided that five months is plenty of time to have capped the bottom of one measly heel (let alone kill a cow and cure the leather for a new pair), I picture a bearded man in suspenders shaking his finger at me. “Ah, patience, ye worldly woman, patience.”
Sometimes I picture the broken boot lying on the Amish man’s work table, or maybe even in plain site on the middle of the dining room table, where, each time his wife walks by, she makes a point to titter with her fellow butter-churning sisters, scoffing at my vain concerns.
Maybe I’ll get a call from Browne’s around the fourth of July. Or a year from when I dropped it off. This is all a passive-aggressive test from the Amish, you see, to make me realize how shallow is my definition of a “long time.”
If there is ever an “Witness” -like shoot out at an Amish farm near Macomb, the suspects will have be those with one broken shoe or boot. Maybe they are Ents, not really Amish at all.
Oh, this was such a good read after my day!
Maybe your boot is like a window air conditioner to the Amish.