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Kicking Back: Huggins Shoes & Repair will close today so owners can rest their feet
Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman
James Huggins works at Huggins Shoes & Repair. He and his wife have owned and run the store for more than 30 years.
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Published: April 29, 2008
Huggins Shoes & Repair in downtown Winston-Salem will close its doors today.
"I'm 81 years old," said James Huggins, who owns the shoe and repair shop at 211 W. Fourth St. with his wife, Louise. "It's time to slow down a little bit."
He said he will miss coming to work in the city.
"I've always worked downtown," he said.
Louise Huggins, 79, said that they have met a lot of nice people over the years.
"All our neighbors are good neighbors," she said.
Huggins is afraid that Rocky, a friendly 12-year-old Pekingese-Pomeranian mix, will be lost without his regular workday routine.
Like the shop, Rocky is a fixture downtown. He goes to work every morning with the Hugginses and knows a lot of customers, many of whom come in just to see him.
"He has never missed a day, except when he was at the vet one time," Louise Huggins said.
James Huggins learned how to repair shoes from his father, John B. Huggins, who opened a shoe shop in his hometown of Lumberton in 1924. When his father died in 1959, Huggins went into business for himself.
In 1973, he moved to Winston-Salem to grow tobacco, using the farming experience that he learned from his father.
He quit farming in 1980 and opened a shoe and repair shop in King. While running the shop, which later closed, he also ran Hines Shoe Repair Shop in the Hines Inc. shoe store, the present location of Huggins Shoes & Repair.
Hines opened in downtown Winston-Salem in 1911, moved to 211 Fourth St. in 1916 and stopped selling shoes at its downtown location in 1991.
Huggins said he continued to run the shoe-repair shop in the building and later added sales of men's name-brand shoes and shoe products and accessories, operating as Huggins Shoes & Repair.
Customers said that downtown won't be the same without the shop.
Rick Smith of Pilot Mountain stopped in last week to pick up dress shoes that Huggins was repairing for him.
He said he was sad to hear that no one was going to take over the business.
"He's a craftsman, an artisan, if you will," Smith said, "and there's no one to succeed him."
Smith does not know where he will go to have his shoes repaired.
Mayor Allen Joines said that the shop has been a great part of the downtown fabric.
"It provided a very needed service, certainly over the years, and good, quality service as well," he said.
Thomas Holly, who owns The Holly & Co. clothing store next door to the shoe and repair shop, has been a customer for 10½ years.
Holly would stop by to have work done on his shoes and learn a bit about shoe repair from Huggins.
"He's about the best around," Holly said. "He'll take an old pair of shoes, tear them up and then put them back together and make them look new. He's good. He's very good."
He sees the Hugginses as family.
"They are very nice and honest, just good wholesome people," he said.
Huggins has seen a lot of changes in the shoe-repair business over the years.
"It used to be people just had two pairs of shoes," he said. "They had one pair for Sunday and one pair for every day. We did a lot of while-you-wait work."
But, gone are the days when he could have a shoe ready in less than 5 minutes. Shoe-repair work takes longer to do now because most soles are glued rather than sewed, he said.
■ Fran Daniel can be reached at 727-7366 or at fdaniel@wsjournal.com.
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