ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9601020005
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Snakeskin boots are some of the hardest that Mandy Jackson has had to shine.
She can't brush them because that tears the scales, so she just rubs conditioner into them with a towel.
Then there are the shark-skin boots, which are pretty tough. "You rub on it and, after a while, you feel the friction on your hands," she said. "Like rubbing over your knuckles or something."
Jackson, a 17-year-old Bland High School senior, has been shining shoes since last spring at the Millwald Barber Shop in downtown Wytheville.
She ran the shop's shoe-shine stand from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. during the summer, and now works it after school hours starting shortly after 3 p.m. A regular shine is $3, boots are $3.50, and tennis shoes are $4. After five shines, the sixth is free.
"People thought it was funny, me doing tennis shoes," she said. "I said, 'Well, it saves you from doing it.'"
She gets a lot of leather footwear. Once she was paid $50 to polish the leather seats in a Cadillac.
"There's always a new kind every time you come in," she said.
"One guy came in here, and I believe he had about two inches of cow manure on his boots. He said, 'Can you do anything with these?'"
She started with saddle soap and water before getting down to polishing. "Took me about 20 minutes," she said. "They turned out pretty good."
Jackson learned to shine shoes when she sought a job at the Wilderness Road Union 76 Truck Stop in Wytheville. The owner was looking for someone who enjoyed talking to people for his shoe-shine stand.
"He taught me one time and from then on I was on my own," she said. She got some additional lessons later from Wanda Hale of the Flying J Truck Stop in Wythe County.
Jackson does enjoy talking to people, even if truckers from northern states (and even a trucker from Australia) tease her about her Southern accent. "I told 'em I didn't have no accent," she drawled, smiling.
After several weeks at the truck stop, a new shoe-shine stand possibility opened up. "Mom said it would be unique to have one in here," Jackson said.
Mom is Brenda Jackson, who has owned the barber shop for about nine years. Brenda Jackson hired only female barbers. She thought a woman could reopen the shop's old shoe-shine stand as well.
The shoe-shine stand fits in with some of the shop's other fixtures, like the cash register which has been used since the shop opened in 1929 and barber sinks that date back even further. Mandy and her father, David Jackson, had to reconstruct the wooden frame and seat for the shoe-shine stand, but the black metal foot-stands are the same ones where customers placed their feet in the late 1800s.
Jackson's mother plans to make the shop a family affair, with her sister, Michelle, joining the barber staff early in 1996. Mandy will probably join in cutting hair before summer, once she completes her apprenticeship under her mother and gets her license.
"You don't have to have a license for shining shoes, that's one good thing about it," Mandy said.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER/Staff. Seventeen-year-old Mandy Jackson,by CNBa senior at Bland High School, polishes a pair of boots at the
Millwald Barber Shop in downtown Wytheville. She learned to shine
shoes when she sought a job at the Wilderness
Road Union 76 Truck Stop. color. Type first letter of feature OR type help for list of commands FIND S-DB DB OPT SS WRD QUIT QUIT Save options? YES NO GROUP YOU'VE SELECTED: QUIT NO login: c