Kootenai Cobbler closes its doors after 19 years

Libby’s last cobbler hung up his faded blue-jean apron for good Tuesday. After 19 years working belts, boots, knife sheaths and holsters, Kenny Mancuso is ready to move on.

During his final week on the job, a litany of well-wishers and final requests poured into the shop on Mineral Avenue that Mancuso believes he was destined to find.

“This is a dying trade,” Mancuso said as he crafted his final piece, a cross-draw holster. “I offered a young man the shop and a month’s training for $18,000. He told me it was too much. Now, that machine there is worth about $16,000. So, you tell me if that’s too much.”

A native of Rochester, N.Y., Mancuso will turn 68 in May. He began visiting Montana in 1980 on hunting trips with buddies. With all the free time coming his way, he has plans for better fishing trips. Pretty soon he will pack away the green sign with gold letters that says, “Business hours subject to change during hunting season” that hangs to the left of the walkway from Kootenai Cobbler’s front room to the work room.

Mancuso delivered soda pop before he was a cobbler. But in 1986 he hurt his back, and the company he worked for was sold. Out of work, Mancuso bummed around a bit before his cousin, Phil Bruno, and Bruno’s partner, Lou Ricci, took him under their wing.

“You asked Phil who the best cobbler around was and he said it was Lou,” Mancuso said. “You asked Lou, and he said Phil.”

Mancuso told his wife, Beatrice, he wanted to move to Montana in 1992. They went on a two-week vacation to see if she liked it. She said it was a nice vacation and the couple left it at that. Two years later, Beatrice asked her husband if he still wanted to move.

“I went out by myself because she had a real good job with great benefits,” Mancuso said. “I had leads, but every day I was a day late and a dollar short.”

He made his way to Glenn’s Shoe Repair in Kalispell and met Jodie Lynch.

“I asked him if he had work, and he gave me some boots to repair,” Mancuso said. “I worked New York style. You know, in, out, see ya later. I finished so fast he couldn’t believe it. He asked when I could start.”

Mancuso loaded his equipment in New York with every intention of making it to Kalispell. But on his way around Montana he hit a light in Libby and noticed a sign for the City Center.

“I turned and saw a ‘for rent’ sign in a shop window,” Mancuso said. “Long story short, I called Jodie and told him I wasn’t going to be able to make it.”

More than anything, Mancuso will miss his conversations with customers. You know, working Montana-style.

Ted Jewell said he had been coming to Mancuso for 15 years.

“He’s resoled my boots about four or five times,” Jewell said. “What’ll I do now?”

Mancuso is not surprised he has no one to take over his shop. We live in a disposable culture, he said. Things are different.

“I told my granddaughter to become an orthopedic neck and hand surgeon.You know why? Because everyone walks around like this,” Mancuso said while miming the familiar gait of a person texting while walking.

A crew will take Mancuso’s equipment to a shop in Bozeman on Thursday. In the following weeks he will pack the old Emerson boom box tuned to country radio, the pictures of him and his wife holding their granddaughter on her first Easter in 1992, the red U.S. Marine Corps flag. It will take months to lift the smell of WD-40, denatured alcohol, leather dye and penetrating oil.

“I have no regrets,” Mancuso said. “I was happy to serve the community.”