Thursday, December 04, 2008

By EVE HIGHTOWER
ehightower@modbee.com

last updated: July 13, 2008 02:36:29 AM

RIVERBANK -- A.J. Meyers is a master of dying trades. He's a cobbler, leather worker, silversmith and saddle maker. The 78-year-old has spent a lifetime doing what he loves and watching the need for it fade away.

"It's really hard right now to make a living because everything is made throwaway," he said, ripping the heel from a cowboy boot tipped upside down on a metal last, a foot mold around which shoes are made and repaired.

He said he doesn't know what will happen to the piles of wooden and metal lasts in a hidden corner of his business, Meyers Shoe Shop and Saddlery in Riverbank, when he's no longer around.

Meyers' granddaughter and newest apprentice, Josi Appling, 15, figures she'll have to teach herself to use them because her grandfather refuses.

"He's teaching me everything but shoes," Josi said, hunkered over a table of dyes and a leather strip destined to keep someone's pants up. "He says it's a dying business."

Roughly 20 percent of Americans have their shoes repaired, according to America's Research Group, which surveys customers about their spending habits.

Meyers has taught most of his family the other trades. Combine what his children and grandchildren know and the shop could go on forever, as Josi hopes.

"But he'll probably outlive all of us anyway," she added.

Distinctive smell

Shoe repair is how Meyers got started. From there, "I just learned what interested me and incorporated it into my business. When I got tired of doing it, I stopped," he said, molding a fresh sole to a boot with the help of a heavy sander that fills the room with a scent that morphs from toast to burnt leather.

That explains the shoe repair, which he learned in two weeks from a cobbler going out of business in Riverbank; leather work, a craft he learned at Oakdale High School; and silversmithing, which he took up after two hours of training by an artisan competing in roping at the annual Oakdale rodeo.

But saddlery happened to him, he explained.

"This fellow brought me a saddle that needed stirrups. I said I'd never done it before, but I'd give it a try. I did, and the guy told everyone to bring their saddles to Riverbank. Pretty soon, I'd done everything on a saddle, so I started building them," he said.

Meyers built his last saddle in 1969. Now, he designs them and has someone else build them.

His designs fill a third of his shop on Santa Fe Street, where he has worked six days a week, 8½ hours a day, since he opened 55 years ago.

Three years after he opened, Meyers moved across the street. So he always has been pretty easy to find. His open door has earned him a lot of friends. Over the course of a day, people of all ages and backgrounds meander in and out of his shop taking in a blend of smells: glue, dyes and leather warmed by the sun radiating through the shop's picture windows.

Meyers said he figures people come by because they like his prices. Josi thinks they like her grandpa.

"Names and money don't matter to him. Everyone is the same in here," she said.

A famous customer

Take the time Steven Spielberg came in. He wanted Meyers, who was ill at the time, to patch a badly beaten leather bag as quickly as possible for a film he was doing in the foothills. It would have taken more work than Meyers was up to, so he said "no."

"He comes in here like everyone is supposed to know him. I said, 'I can't quit my other customers' work ahead of you,' " Meyers said. "I could never cater to upper-end people. That's just not me. Most people that come in here are plain working people like me," he said.

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