Word: shoes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Shoe and bootmaking is a Limmer family tradition. Both Peter's and his wife's fathers were shoemakers, and the present family boasts innumerable shoemaking uncles. He was one of twelve brothers and two unfortunate sisters. Unfortunate, because they cost the family 200 marks and considerable fame...
After a war Peter's lift was a mixture of shoe and boot making and visits to nearby Roseheim where he courted his wife, alias Mama, alias The Boss. (She denies the last titles). In 1921 Peter was awarded his Meisterbrief and became one of the youngest master shoemakers in Bavaria. But bringing up two children in inflation-ridden Germany was too much of a job on shoemaker's money, so Peter decided, in 1924, to emigrate to the United States where one of his sisters lived...
...worked for a short while in a Boston shoe factory. But then "we saw this empty store," Mama explains, "and a German we met said we should start for ourselves because we had no money and couldn't lose any. So we borrowed $43 to pay the rent on the house and the store and started repairing shoes...
Early financial problems were great, according to both Peter and Mama. "When I got to America, I had $5.50," recalls Peter, "and when I paid the express for my trunk I didn't have anything." Peter, who spoke no English them, went on in the shoe repair business, and gradually turned his trade to bigger and better things. To the shoe repair business was soon added that of shoemaking. The Limmers showed a sample pair of ski boots around, but in 1924 there weren't many skiers in America...
During the war, with the boys in the service the Limmers went back to shoe repairing. When the boys returned, the family again abandoned that mundane occupation for producing their own. "The people around here didn't like that," says Mama, "they said the Limmers were getting too independent...