The Shoemaker

The Shoemaker

When my grandma lost mobility, I would drop by more and more frequently to run errands and do chores for her.
Drop off the dry cleaning, rake the front lawn, that kind of stuff.

Well, I was cleaning out her attic for her one day and I found this old army uniform and took it down, I said hey grandma, what's the story of this?

It turns out, it's my grandad's old army uniform.
Yeah, no fooling. My grandad, who'd been dead for years.

Well, I started going through the pockets - I didn't know what else to do with the thing, so I just started going through pockets - and there was this old, yellowed, crumbled, torn piece of paper in there, just barely legible if you looked at it hard enough.

My grandma asked me what it was, but I told her it was nothing. It was actually a paper from a shoemaker my grandad would go. My pop told me about it a few times. I didn't know if they were still around, or if they were still in business, but I swung by the address my pop gave me, and they were, and this man (old as Methuselah, I swear) walks up to the register.

I didn't tell him about my grandad's uniform or the history of the paper I had in my hand, I just showed it to him and he scratched himself and he grunted and shuffled to the back of the store.

He comes back, he looks at me, those ancient eyes, he looks at me, and he says yeah, I got your shoes. They'll be ready next week.