Yet another business has disappeared from Port Washington, “poof,” without a trace.
This time it is Jimmy’s Shoes, on Main Street near the corner where Port Washington Boulevard turns into Middle Neck Road.
The sign on the storefront said “Gail’s Stride Rite” — but it’s always been “Jimmy’s Shoes” to me, and to everyone I know… even though it’s been more than 15 years since Jimmy Kallenberg left for other businesses, and salesman Frank Petriello took over the store.
For a while there was a very nice (and patient!) African-American woman who worked there, too. I never really got it through my head that she wasn’t the “Gail” of the sign. Why wouldn’t she be?
I hope she’s forgiven me, by now.
Whenever I told newcomers to Port where to go for shoes, I’d call it “Jimmy’s Gail’s Frank’s Shoes” … including all the invisible proprietors, and reminding myself of a comedy routine about asking directions in Maine from long-time residents: “Eh, well, you turn left at the old barn that burned down in ‘89; then just keep on till you pass the windmill that blew away five years ago; then take a right; can’t miss it!”
Jimmy and Frank saw me through the trauma of buying my first-born his first pair of shoes.
When I put my toddler down on two newly-shod feet, I was totally unprepared for what happened next.
Unaccustomed to the weight of anything thicker than socks, he looked up at me with a face that said, “Traitor! Why have you glued my feet to the floor?”
But he got the gist soon enough, and the next few years became a blur of running after him, and then his brother, in parks, and playgrounds, and supermarket aisles.
Jimmy’s is the place I went whenever I thought either boy might need his next pair of shoes. It is also the place that sometimes told me that we didn’t need them, yet.
Who does that, any more? Not Amazon, that’s for sure.
Frank had told me about his plans to move around the corner, from Main Street to a place on the block near the Post Office.
He moved out all right — and disappeared.
Luckily, my boys have grown up enough to buy their own shoes. On the internet, of course.
“Everybody buys shoes on the internet,” they tell me. Well, whoever this “everybody” is, they are ruining it for the rest of us!
I suppose internet shopping works fine if you are a normal ordinary size, with no complications. But which of us is “normal”?
My feet have always been slightly different sizes, which matters in some styles and models, but not others — I never know which, until I try to wear them.
Plus I have bunions — again, worse on one foot than the other. The net result can take shoes that look gorgeous, in an internet picture, and turn them into instruments of torture when I actually put them on.
Once upon a time, there would be a salesman at my elbow, who would say, ‘Oh. I see the problem. Let me try another brand, instead — I think they might just work for you — but the sizes run a little small, so don’t believe the numbers.” And he would disappear and come back with something that saved my life.
Try explaining that to Amazon, or Zapdos, or Zappos, whoever they are.
I’m sure they expect you to buy 10 different sizes and widths of the same shoe, in the hopes that one will actually go on your foot. And I am sure that their business model is built around people like me, who will hide the nine pairs of failures under the bed rather than ever get it together enough to mail them back.
As if I had room for that kind of extravagance left on my credit card anyway, after buying two sizes of new winter coat from L.L. Bean (one of which I swear I am bringing back to the UPS store the day after tomorrow!).
Alas, there are no more shoe stores, and no more salesmen, either.
I might as well be Cinderella, waiting in vain for Prince Charming to ever show up. She’d do better to order glass slippers from Amazon.
She can only hope they aren’t being flown to her by drone, because when that thing drops the package…. Sorry, dear, but fairy tale endings aren’t what they used to be.
Neither is Main Street.
