Entering the shop, the rich smell of leather and shoe polish permeates the air and morning sunlight pours in through the front windows. The machinery is heavy and old, some of it dating back a century. Standing at the outsole stitching machine, Aaron Henry breathes new life into a pair of well-worn Wolverine 1000 Mile Boots, getting them ready for their next thousand miles.

As a cobbler at JD’s Shoe Repair in Portland, Oregon, Aaron’s favorite part of the job is the people with whom he works and the happy, friendly vibes of the shop, but aside from that, it’s a love of working with his hands that makes him love coming to work every day. For Aaron, his life-long hobby of working on old cars translated directly into his life working in shoe repair.

Whether it involves regluing sneakers, resoling old boots, adding new heels, or doing new stitch work on Western boots, if a piece of footwear can be fixed, Aaron and JD’s will do it. He says the clientele varies, from people who are trying to be economical by keeping their favorite sneakers going instead of throwing them away, to people who’ve done their research and want their boots to last a lifetime, to people working in the trades who use and abuse their footwear every day and just want to make it last. He loves that it’s a blend of time-tested techniques and inventive creativity.

The most satisfying thing, he says, is resoling a pair of beloved boots. “Those are very rewarding,” he says, “because you tear something down that looks rough, and then you put it back together with the new stitching and the new sole, all trimmed out. It looks really good, and the customers are usually really happy with it and feel like it’s a worthwhile investment.”

One of the big goals of JD’s is to break down the stereotype of the grumpy old guy behind the shoe repair counter. This shop is a new generation of an old trade.

“Our shop is the nicest people in shoe repair,” he says. “The average person is not going to know much about repair and exactly what needs to be done to their footwear, though there are definitely people who do. We’re not trying to make somebody feel unintelligent when they bring their stuff in and want it fixed but don’t know all the terms and lingo.”

Aaron and his coworkers often bond with their customers around the concept of extending the life of a pair of boots, keeping them in use rather than sending them to the landfill, and this comes down to quality workmanship, using quality parts and pieces, and a mindset of treating the work as an investment. He had the opportunity to work recently on a pair of treasured Wolverine 1000 Miles that had been around the block a time or two. After some 80 different hands touched the boots during their initial creation at the factory in Wynne, Arkansas, Aaron’s were the next hands in these boots’ journey.