By Loyd Cook
May 16, 2008 11:58 pm
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It’s kind of funny, I got the idea about this week’s column because I took my boots in for repair. I don’t know if any of you noticed, but this particular pair of boots made it into the newspaper when I was writing my travelogue about my cross country motorcycle trip last year.
These boots, because of that trip, have become an old friend to me. Those Tony Llama ostriches were the only footwear I took with me and they rode the pegs of my motorcycle for nearly 8,000 miles.
But back to taking them in for repair.
Because these boots have traveled so far, been used as my almost exclusive choice of footwear before and since, they were ... well ... “hard used” may be the best way to describe them. They’re getting new heels, full soles, and all four bootstraps replaced.
Yeah. They’re pretty beat up.
When I dropped them off at the boot repair shop on Beaton, the nice lady there pointed at a rack of boots with tickets attached to them, letting me know that the shop is going to have custody of those boots for a while because of the backlog of work they have right now.
Throughout the next couple of days since, I’ve been thinking about the many pairs of boots sitting there and what they looked like.
I’m wondering if those boots in for repair are a sign of the times.
There have been reports on how the home improvement industry is booming as people are buying the materials themselves and doing the work themselves.
I’ve read that all kind of suppliers for items that are used for repair work are seeing a spike in business as folks, instead of buying new, are fixing or doing more maintenance work on a multitude of personal items.
One Associated Press story off the financial wire was talking about how the traditional retail chain giants didn’t make earnings projections in the latest report ... but Walmart and the “club” retailers — Sam’s and Costco — were doing well. They even reported a slight upswing in the amount of same-store sales compared to a year ago.
And the financial experts are saying that trend to the discount store purchasing is stretching up into the higher income brackets as even the people making good money are feeling the pinch of the economy right now.
All of this thinking, and noticing reports, sparked by my pair of boots needing repair.
In my case, like a lot of guys, I have an emotional attachment to my boots. I really like THAT pair, so my choice, and the choice of at least a few of the guys with boots in for repairs, likely doesn’t trend with what everyone else is doing.
But, the “R” word is here, I think, as we saw in an opinion page cartoon on this page in the past couple of days.
Recession.
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Loyd Cook is a Daily Sun staff writer. He may be contacted via e-mail at lcook@corsicanadailysun.com
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