WHERE IT ALL STARTED

Happy Mother's Day Mom,
from me and Domenick, Stephen and Monica, Tracey and Fred, David and Su and all your grandchildren, great grandchildren and Rippy too.
XXOO, we love you.

In honor of Mother's day and upcoming Father's Day, I thought it would be nice to show the shop where I grew up, my first job as cashier and duster, and most important, where it all started with Bonanno sandals.

Below is a photo which ran in the local newspaper, The Palm Beach Post, taken of my Mom gluing the soles of the sandals before my Dad would stitch, sand and stain them. I wish I had a photo of her whipstitching the sandals or hand punching the patterns. It was such a cool process to watch, but I can't find a thing.



















Below, is my Dad and Stephen, age 16, at "Dixie Shoe Repair" on Dixie Hwy. W. Palm Beach and if you look really close, you'll see in the right hand corner of the photo, a painted sign and the actual Navajo sandals my Dad made and set on his counter for his customers to order, one pair at a time. He never thought to mass market his sandals. And I think by now you all know the rest of the story.
Click on photo to enlarge

















Oh the memories ... Dad would have bins stacked floor to ceiling with ladies heels in all shapes colors and styles. I would pull out a handful of heels and spend my weekends playing house. Heels were my dolls in the shop. The high spiked heels were the sophisticated ladies, the thick stacked heels were the Mothers and the kitten heels were the young Barbi types. I played for hours.
Quite an imagination ;)