a glimpse: stanley burkert, born 1935.

stanley burkert grew up in the monterrey area on the outskirts of kutztown and now lives in maidencreek township. at poetry readings, people seem to really love the first line of his poem and hearing and the next sentence involving breakfast food used in a way other than eating it at a kitchen or dining room table. his shoe-making stories and memories are one of a kind and take shape on a fruit-named street in kutztown. below is an excerpt from his poem.

*

at age 10, i found a nail in my foot. my grandmother

pressed a piece of uncooked bacon against the skin

to help draw out the pus, and it worked. we mostly

walked barefoot in those days. so i never expected

that i’d one day be making shoes in a factory on peach

street in kutztown, at the saucony shoe manufacturing

company. i started on february 1, 1954 and kept that

job for nine years. we fashioned sports shoes—ones

for football, golf, bowling. i made one at a time with

a last, the wooden form shaped like a foot. you built

the shoe around it. later, my job changed, and i put

a shoe on a grinding machine, held it upside-down,

and smoothed the edges of each of them at the bottom.

i inserted temporary tacks into the underside. then

a man who did the stitching around the outer sections

took over, the next step. they paid me 75 cents per

hour at first, and after a year, i said to the owner,

mr. winchester of new york city (when he visited,

he stayed at the monterrey hotel on route 222—

it later burned), don’t you think i deserve a raise ? 

he asked, how much are you getting ? so i told him. 

my next paycheck showed that i had been bumped up 

to 80 cents an hour. i felt so proud of that extra nickel 

by the hour i’d be earning. i made a pair of mickey 

mantle’s baseball shoes and a pair of size 22 boxing

shoes which later shipped to germany. sometimes i

ate lebanon bologna and american cheese sandwiches

on my lunch break, or peanut butter with homemade

strawberry jelly. i quit to milk cows for a while, then

worked at the furnaces at cartech near route 12.

*