{"id":64831,"date":"2023-03-09T13:13:35","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T18:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=64831"},"modified":"2023-03-09T13:13:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T18:13:38","slug":"a-stitch-in-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/a-stitch-in-time\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stitch in Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Peter Dorman, 87, stitches shoes for Easymoc in Lewiston. <\/strong>\u201cWhat I enjoy about it? As long as I stand here and do the work? Nobody bothers me.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Here is Peter Dorman, 87 years old, still standing. He sews moccasin-style shoes in Lewiston, 40 hours every week, earning $20 an hour. He doesn\u2019t get sore anymore, he swears. \u201cAfter doing it for 60 years? My muscles are pretty well trained,\u201d chuckles Dorman. Callouses tell the story of his work: the tops of his middle and ring fingers are scuffed and bright, like freshly sanded pine furniture. The sides of his pinky fingers bear deep notches where he uses them to pull his threads taut, carrying the tension across his hands lest the stress break his needles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman learned to sew shoe leather by hand in 1962. In those days, Bass made a moccasin-style loafer called the Weejun\u2014a name that evoked traditional Norwegian fishermen\u2019s shoes\u2014that was all the rage in preppy America. Dorman sewed as many as 45 pairs a day for around 75 cents a pair. The mills bustled. Across the river, Auburn shipped leather and canvas shoes worldwide, as it had since the days before the Union Army marched south in boots made in Maine. By the early twentieth century, the town manufactured millions of pairs of shoes and boots every year.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A work bench Dorman developed specifically for making shoes and has carried with him throughout his career.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The mills from those days remain. So do the old-time methods, carried on by the shoemakers who park their pickups and SUVs behind the loading docks today. Once upon a time, most workers walked. Leaving their three-story walk-ups on Ash and Cedar and Walnut Streets, passing Chapel Street and onto Canal, thousands of them filed into the hulking industrial castles on the Androscoggin River at the start of every shift. Now, the few commuters who still clock in arrive by car, clustering their vehicles on any flat patch of gravel or cracked asphalt that works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman meets me at the loading dock and ushers me past a \u201cpassenger use prohibited\u201d sign and onto a freight elevator. The clanking green metal doors close, then open, and as we step out onto the sixth floor we are staring down the vanishing point of a vast and very empty hallway a hundred or so yards long. Cheerily, Dorman walks all the way down to the hallway\u2019s other end, turns left, and opens a door. Inside is Easymoc, an independent shoe company that was founded by a 34-year-old but bills itself as old-school. In here, the industry\u2019s past orchestral scale has been arranged for a string quartet: there\u2019s the percussive tap of the machine sewer, the rough brush of sandpaper on an insole readied for glue, the rumble of the air compressor in a heel laster. And then, above it all, the elegant thwip sound of a hand-sewer\u2019s needles pulling waxed thread through leather, time after time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Green, foot-shaped molds called \u201clasts\u201d guide a shoe\u2019s construction. A shoemaker has a pair for every style and size.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Leather arrives here as it always has, smooth and tanned in a stack of \u201csides.\u201d To the untrained eye, they\u2019re amorphous, like 20 square feet of rolled-out gingerbread dough. But of course, you can see that\u2019s a cow there: You can make out shapes of head, legs, haunches. There\u2019s the scar where maybe she snagged her hide on barbwire as a calf. Farther down, there\u2019s a section of wavy fat wrinkles she gained from grazing away her adolescence in full sun. These blemishes reduce a hide\u2019s value and vex the cutter, who must devise clever ways to hide the bad marks\u2014under buckle straps, between the insole and plug\u2014in the finished shoes. The cutter solves hides like puzzles, arranging die molds of a shoe\u2019s component parts close together and shoe by shoe, heel-to-toe across the cow. Each hide has its own personality, which can vary as much as the personality of its erstwhile cow (which is to say, somewhat). Leather stretches; placing the component parts together ensures that the shoe will stretch uniformly. In this way, under a capable cutter\u2019s ministry, any decent-living cow can be delivered a new life as 28 size-nines (give or take a shoe).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the cutter gets sloppy, the leather won\u2019t stretch properly, and before long he\u2019ll have a hand-sewer cursing his name. \u201cHand-sewers are not shy people\u2014I\u2019ll tell you that right now,\u201d says Kevin Shorey, co-CEO at Quoddy, which makes custom boots, shoes, and slippers on the second floor of the old Pepperell Mill on Lisbon Street. They\u2019re ornery, and they\u2019re older, Shorey explains, and there aren\u2019t enough of them to go around\u2014one of the reasons he\u2019s been lobbying the City of Lewiston to add hand sewing to its vocational programs or introduce high school students to shoemaking in class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tanned cowhides arrive at the mill bearing imperfections\u2014a scar here, a fat wrinkle there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Clever shoemakers know how to hide these blemishes, creating footwear that appears smooth while also being undeniably sturdy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even on the day he first took the job, Dorman was an ambivalent shoemaker. \u201cI didn\u2019t have feelings one way or the other about it. I had to have a job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had grown up in Canaan, Vermont, the youngest of 13 kids. Only 10 survived infancy. When Dorman was two years old, a piece of furniture crushed his ankle. When he returned home from the hospital, his mother was gone\u2014committed to an asylum, he was told. His memory of it all is fuzzy, but the siblings became wards of the town, and Dorman and an older brother were sent to live with a prominent couple who lived downtown. He says he has only one memory of his mother: A sunny day in June after his high school graduation, the car taking her back to the institution stopped next to his house. He walked out onto the lawn. The driver rolled down the back window. They looked at one another but said nothing. \u201cI guess neither one of us could think of anything to say,\u201d he says. It\u2019s still hard for him to talk about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After high school, he worked carpentry and house-painting jobs in Connecticut for two years, then joined the navy, sailing the Mediterranean on the last tour of the USS Salem<\/em> (CA 139). \u201cCA stands for cruiser attack,\u201d he says. But being the relatively peaceful years of the late 1950s, \u201cfor us, it was all cruisin\u2019.\u201d After his tour, he married his girlfriend from Connecticut. \u201cI never got a Dear John letter,\u201d he says, \u201cso I figured this is the girl for me.\u201d They moved to be closer to her family in Maine. A brother-in-law there sewed shoes and offered to get him a job at G.H. Bass in Wilton. He figured he\u2019d better take it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman learned hand sewing at the Bass mill the way they\u2019d always taught it, standing in a line of a dozen or so men, watching an instructor demonstrate the basic stitches from several feet away as the factory bustled around them. Most trainees quit in the first few weeks. Hand sewing can be tricky, tedious work. It\u2019s also, for lack of a better word, pokey\u2014even now, Dorman jabs his own fingers with his needles or diamond awl about once a week. In those days, only one in five trainees graduated to the production floor. Dorman refused to give up. \u201cI was a stranger here. I had to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The tools of the trade have changed little in over a century, including D.B. Gurney Company tacks that were first manufactured in 1825, the same year John Quincy Adams was elected president.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The waste and neglect of the training process frustrated him. \u201cThe trainer would be off somewhere else, and this guy is sitting there with a totally perplexed look on his face.\u201d Dorman kept his frustrations mostly to himself for three decades. When the head trainer finally retired in the late 1980s he piped up and applied for the job, offering a revised training program he\u2019d gone over and over in his head for years. He\u2019d train hand-sewers one at a time, in a dedicated part of the mill away from the other hand-sewers, giving them the individual attention and quiet he believed they needed to get the hang of the job. In short order, Bass Shoes went from 80 percent attrition among hand-sewing trainees to less than half, according to Dorman. His success gave him a sense of meaning and purpose, and his trainees felt bonded to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a white-collar executive had overhauled the training program at a manufacturer of Bass\u2019s size, they might expect six or seven-figure bonuses for an improvement as substantial as Dorman\u2019s. But Dorman and his men got a different reward: in 1991 the shoemaker all but quit hand sewing shoes in Maine, laying off all but ten hand-sewers and moving operations to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the funny thing about business that I don\u2019t understand,\u201d Dorman says, shaking his head. \u201cThey trained all these people to do the job, and then they shipped it offshore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Bass left, Dorman jumped from job to job for almost 20 years\u2014attending automotive technician school, tuning skis at Titcomb Mountain in Farmington, working on marine engines at a boatyard on Lisbon Street in Lewiston, and eventually working in insurance customer service at an ICT call center. Ironically enough, ICT had its call center in the old Bass headquarters in Wilton. And the job was steady, with a 401(k).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Dorman was working at ICT, his wife got sick and he quit to take care of her, shuttling her to doctor\u2019s visits and hospital stays. Time passed, hospital bills piled up, and her health got worse. He cashed his retirement savings to cover the costs. He was broke when she died. This is how he found himself sewing shoes again in the Pepperell building in 2012, renting a small room with a hot plate and a cot for $300 a month in a part of the mill everybody called the Dungeon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Dorman found a little magic in that dungeon. One of the other millworkers was being picked up every day by his girlfriend named Joyce. Joyce and Dorman caught one another\u2019s eye. When he heard the two broke up, he decided to show up at the Acme Social Club on Park Street, where he knew she liked to go. That\u2019s how he, at the age of 77, met the love of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With two needles and diamond awl, which he sharpens himself, Dorman sews together a shoe\u2019s toe box using a single waxed thread.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI saw him walk through the door,\u201d Joyce says, recalling the day. \u201cOffered him a place to sit. One thing led to another.\u201d She tells me the story after church on a Sunday\u2014Joyce and Dorman faithfully attend Pathway Vineyard in Lewiston\u2014the three of us chatting over brunch at Governor\u2019s Restaurant down the road. That night, she says, she invited him to go dancing with her and a friend at Mixers in Sabattus. \u201cNow this place is a pickup, okay?\u201d says Joyce, raising an eyebrow from behind her plate of eggs and hashbrowns. \u201cIf you wanna get picked up, you get picked up.\u201d She smiles. \u201cBut Peter just sits there! I say, Peter, don\u2019t you dance? Come on, then!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI gave her the opportunity, and she took it!\u201d He shrugs and smiles craftily. \u201cShe picked me up! Oh, man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman moved out of the dungeon and in with Joyce shortly after that. Three years later, he asked her to marry him\u2014so they wouldn\u2019t be \u201cliving in sin,\u201d he says, grinning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman\u2019s ship from his navy days is a museum relic now, open to the public in Quincy, Massachusetts, where it is billed as the last ship of its kind in existence. G.H. Bass left Maine decades ago. Dorman\u2019s one living sibling moved to warmer Florida. He\u2019s grateful his five children by his first wife still live in Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But new signs of life are sprouting up in the mills: artisanal companies like Easymoc, which was founded in 2020. Easymoc\u2019s founder, Greg Cordeiro, is one of a wave of disaffected millennials\u2014the children of the generation that shipped all those jobs overseas in the first place\u2014who aim to bring U.S. manufacturing back to its roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While growing up in the 1990s in the suburb of Pembroke, Massachusetts, Cordeiro says, he never realized he could simply make stuff for a living. Nobody he knew went to vocational school. Cordeiro\u2019s father had a degree in architecture and loved computers. He was even featured on the cover of a 1980s Br\u00f8derbund Software computer catalog for his creative use of an early drawing program, but he got \u201cstuck in sales,\u201d Cordeiro says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Cordeiro graduated he marched into the corporate world as well, working as a design director for Timberland, where he made patterns to be assembled in factories out of the country. It wasn\u2019t until 2012, when he purchased his own industrial shoe-sewing machine, that he realized he could make products and found a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a reward, a catharsis,\u201d in manufacturing, says Cordeiro. \u201cI can see the fruits of my labor. There\u2019s a physical end\u2014I see it on people\u2019s feet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cordeiro believes the postpandemic era presents an opportunity for artisanal manufacturers like his. The white-collar world is full of disenchanted desk workers seeking meaning and substance like he once did\u2014and like his father still does. \u201cHe\u2019s 65 this year, and he\u2019s counting down the days\u201d until he can retire from his corporate job, says Cordeiro. But he\u2019s fighting an uphill battle, even on the home front: his father\u2019s division sells manufacturing robots that automate factory work in North America. \u201cOf course he\u2019s trying to sell me a robot. I\u2019m like, Dad, really? Your own son? You are a salesman through and through! Can you imagine us putting a robot next to Peter here?\u201d Cordeiro laughs, gesturing at Dorman. In this mill, Dorman himself constructed many of the tables and workbenches by hand\u2014\u201cWe call \u2019em Peterbuilt,\u201d Cordeiro says\u2014including the double-bench teaching station where he currently works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cordeiro introduces me to his newest trainee, whom I\u2019ll call Evan, who graduated in 2015 with a degree in mechanical engineering and moved home to Maine during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When he\u2019s not training new sewers, Dorman can sew 50 pairs of shoes a week. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Using an awl, two needles, and a single long waxed thread, a hand-sewer must bind the moccasin\u2019s top, or plug, to its bottom, or vamp; the result is a comfortable and resilient cradle for the foot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just like me,\u201d says Cordeiro. \u201cHe had a desk job, hated it, and decided to come in here.\u201d Cordeiro says he views Dorman as a sort of secret weapon, whose charm and deep knowledge can inspire his next generation of hand-sewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis man is a wealth of knowledge,\u201d gushes the newest trainee, beaming at Dorman. \u201cHe\u2019s got me all worked up!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But six weeks later, Evan has all but quit too. His poorly cobbled moccasins are jumbled in a bin beside Dorman\u2019s teaching work-bench. Dorman is frustrated with the man\u2019s lack of stick-to-it-iveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe can\u2019t focus and just do his stitching,\u201d Dorman says. He gestures at a pile of moccasins next to his workbench. \u201cThese are the three best shoes he did. And he did those two weeks ago. Oh boy, since then? He\u2019s been going downhill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman\u2019s seen it plenty of times: a trainee makes progress and has a magical, masterful day when the needle grooves and every stitch lands just right. But then they go in the next day, and it\u2019s a mess again. The backslide happens to everyone. That\u2019s when most decide they\u2019re going to quit\u2014Dorman can see it in their eyes\u2014even if they don\u2019t say so out loud. \u201cHe\u2019s done it. He didn\u2019t recover,\u201d he says. \u201c100 percent of people have that rollercoaster. There\u2019s good days and bad days. It\u2019s human nature.\u201d Yet others persevere, as Dorman did. \u201cThey would all make it if they\u2019d stuck with it.\u201d He wishes he could get everyone to see that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With no one to teach, Dorman turns back to his sewing. He pulls the vamp around a size-8\u00bd wooden dummy foot, known as a last, and hammers metal tacks into the heel and toe, holding it in place. He does the same with the smaller top piece of leather\u2014the plug\u2014so they sit loosely alongside one another. The leather and the last are cozily warm, fresh out of a makeshift toaster-oven\/heat-lamp rig that Peter calls his hot box. He punctures the vamp and plug together in one smooth motion with his diamond awl, then slips two needles through the newly made holes in tandem, in opposite directions, and pulls the threads tight, raising his arms wide. As the waxed thread zips through the firm leather and goes taut, it\u2019s satisfyingly audible from yards away, even as the heel laster\u2019s air compressor goes full bore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Production slows down in summer, however, so Dorman can spend more time working in his garden. \u201cThat man stands all day long!\u201d says his wife. \u201cIf I can get him to sit, know what happens? He goes to sleep.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He gingerly tucks a needle in the crook of his thumb and forefinger. Switching back to the awl, he places his index finger firmly against the side of the shoe\u2014the same distance from the seam every single time\u2014and repeats again, and again, and again. The meditative rhythm of Dorman\u2019s work makes it look easy, but it belies the complex calculus at play in his hands. In 2023 computers can best humanity\u2019s chess champions and peer into the universe\u2019s far reaches through the infrared astronomy of the James Webb telescope, but no machine can efficiently make an elegant and even moccasin seam, as Dorman does now with his needles and diamond awl. His fingertips sense the pliant leather\u2014its warm, animal idiosyncrasy\u2014and from those small touches, he knows its needs. Deftly, imperceptibly, his fingers adjust the angles of his needles to stitch an unpredictable hide into a smooth and perfect curve, one that will someday cradle an individual foot. A sturdy shoe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They call it muscle memory. Dorman\u2019s got six decades of it. He swears six weeks is enough to do the job. Just don\u2019t quit on him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorman sews the seam until he reaches the tacks hammered into the toes of the last. He pries them out. He keeps sewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a shoe remains unfinished at the end of a workday, so be it. \u201cWhen it comes time to quit? I quit. I might have one needle through the hole, the other one\u2019s danglin\u2019, all right?\u201d But really, Dorman has no plans to be done. He wants to put his own sturdy shoes to good use. He\u2019s taken up hiking and is eyeing the Appalachian Trail. The dream came to him one day in church, he says. He wants to hike the entire trail by the time he turns 90. Sure, it\u2019s not easy. But it\u2019s simple: you put one shoe in front of the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t

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