Well-worn lesson from a high priest of repair Gaspare Mannina
Gaspare Mannina working in his Babylon Village shop. Credit: Martha Rohl
It’s that time again. Out with the old, in with the new.
And that’s got me thinking about Gaspare Mannina.
I never knew that was his name. I only knew him as the little old Italian man behind the counter of his shoe repair shop in Babylon Village. My wife and I went there about a half-dozen times over the years, with a broken heel or a worn-out sole. The shoe always came back good as new, and the price always seemed to be $9.
“He was always lowering it for some reason,” his daughter Lucy Domingo said, chuckling on the phone. “He did it because of the love of the actual work.”
Mannina died last summer, at age 87. He ran his store for 53 years, after a stint in a cobbler’s stall at the Port Authority bus terminal, his first job upon emigrating from Sicily in 1958. He worked at his craft right up to the end.
Mannina was one of a disappearing breed. The number of shoe repair shops in America has declined by more than two-thirds in the last 25 years, says the Shoe Service Institute of America. What makes this especially troubling is that we really need people like Mannina. Many of us don’t get that, because many of us don’t like to get things fixed. It’s easier, and sometimes cheaper, to just throw them away. And we expect things to break, so we don’t get all that upset when they live down to our expectations.
Mannina’s shop is closed now, a white shade pulled low across the big front window. But the vestibule still sports the circular signs that read: “Don’t throw ’em away. Repair ’em today.”
That wasn’t just a business proposition. It’s what Mannina taught Lucy and her sister Josephine about life.
“We were always told you buy good, even if it’s one pair, and you take care of them,” Lucy said. “When you buy it, you want it to last. . . . Today, society just takes and throws out and if they get a season out of it, it was well worth it.”
That predisposition has consequences. We throw away more than 6 million tons of clothing and footwear each year — more than 300 million pairs of shoes alone — and more than 2 million tons of appliances, according to government and industry sources. That strains our bulging landfills and gobbles up our natural resources.
It’s no accident so many old-time artisan repairmen were immigrants, from circumstances that taught them an appreciation for the things you owned. It’s called old school now, when it ought to be just plain school, and Gaspare Mannina was one of its high priests. Lucy called his craft a dying art.
“The restoration of the shoe,” she said. “He took such pride.”
Remember that the next time the boot gets ripped, the iron goes cold, or the toaster goes on the fritz.
Out with the old, in with the new?
Maybe not so much.
Michael Dobie is a member of Newsday’s editorial board.
