He Heals the Soles of the Downtrodden

The Costa Mesa shopping center where Jack Harb has spent the last 22 years repairing shoes has seen better times.

The center’s anchor store, JCPenney, moved out a few years ago, followed by a few smaller businesses that once thrived in what are now empty storefronts.

But Harb is not complaining.

He’s heard the stories about the decline of shoe repair in a throwaway society and seen other businesses founder, but his small shop is full of shoes to be resoled, repaired and otherwise rejuvenated. The 56-year-old Anaheim resident stays late nearly every day to keep up with the workload.

“I’m making a good living out of this business, and it’s something I like doing,” said Harb, a shoe repairman for 40 years. “I don’t really have any other kind of work I could jump to, so I’m sticking with it. I’m going to stay here until I’m dead.”

The Cobbler’s Bench, tucked away in back of the Harbor Shopping Center on Harbor Boulevard, is the fifth shop he’s owned since serving a two-year apprenticeship with his father as a youth.

During a recent afternoon, most customers came to his shop wanting new soles on their old favorites. But others also come to his shop to have rubber “sole protectors” put on their newly purchased shoes to extend their life. His customers want to get the most for their money, shoe-wise, said Harb, who rarely turns down a repair job, regardless of how desperate the condition of the shoes may be.

“You’d be surprised. The other day a lady came in with a big hole going right through both shoes, and she said, ‘Can you help me? Can you fix them?’ I bet you she’d taken those shoes to other shops, and they refused her. They want easy jobs. But I said, ‘Yeah, I can fix them up.’ ”

His father, Charlie Harb, learned the craft of making shoes in Palestine at age 12. He was married with six children when he decided to take his skills to America in search of a better life for his family. He borrowed money to pay for passage to the United States, where he soon found a job at a Detroit shoe factory.

After a year, Charlie Harb moved to California and worked as a shoe repairman in Hollywood. Three years later, he’d saved enough money to buy his own shoe repair shop in Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills and send for his wife and children to join him from Israel.

“I went to high school for about a year, just to learn basic English. But I didn’t like school very much. So my father said, ‘What do you want to do? Do you want to learn the shoe business?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ I was almost 17 years old when I decided to learn the business. By 19 years old, I had my own shop. My father sold me his shop and he started another one.”

Next to the workbench in his Costa Mesa shop is a 6-foot-high, jet-black stitching machine, capable of piercing the thickest leather. A pair of equally large, industrial-looking machines sit nearby. Called Auto Solers, the machines nail the heels onto the shoes. One machine for men’s shoes; one for women’s. The machines do much of the work that Harb’s father used to do by hand, but discretion is still required.

“Some people, when they nail the heels, they put about 25 or 30 nails in each heel. What the hell do you need 25 or 30 nails for? They don’t know any better. Look how many I put,” he said, turning over a recently repaired shoe and pointing to the glossy black heel. “One, two, three, four, five--that’s all you need.”

The quality of the materials used by shoe repair shops also varies widely, Harb said. Some repairs are done with factory seconds, which wear out quickly, he said, picking up a worn pair of men’s shoes to illustrate his point.

“This is the third pair of shoes this guy brought me. I will use a complete sole for him. See what kind of material I use,” he said, running his fingers across the outer surface of a thick leather replacement sole he plucked off a shelf. “When somebody pays $40 to have his shoes repaired, you’ve got to give him good stuff,” Harb said, sniffing the new sole in appreciation of the scent of quality leather.

When he first takes shoe in hand to strip away the old sole and pry off the heel, he places the shoe over a steel mold, called a shoe last, shaped like a small foot. The mold is connected to a metal base, or shoe jack, that is bolted to the floor. Much of the repair work is still done by hand.

“The shoe manufacturers, they make shoes not to last, to make people keep buying. I cannot do that. I want my work to last.”

Such work has supported his family for generations. Both of his brothers, a son and six cousins have all followed him into the business. Harb has not had a vacation for eight years. He doesn’t want his customers to go anywhere else.

“My father came to this country with nothing, and he worked hard all of his life. I remember when he used to come into his shop at 3 o’clock in the morning to do dye work until about 6 or 7 o’clock, then he’d start working on his main work. He never turned any work away, and I won’t either. This is how I make my living.”

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Profile:

Jack Harb

Age: 56

Hometown: Jerusalem

Residence: Anaheim

Family: Wife, Mary; three children; two grandchildren

Background: Moved from Israel to U.S. in 1958 at age 16; bought first shoe repair shop, in Baldwin Hills, from his father at age 19; bought and sold shops in Hollywood and Anaheim before purchasing his current business, the Cobbler’s Bench, in Costa Mesa, in 1976

From the ground up: “My father was a good teacher. He brought me into his shop and the first thing he taught me was how to shine shoes. Then it was up to me to watch what he was doing, how he did his work. That’s the way I learned.”

Source: Jack Harb; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times