My American Hometown Shoe Store

This is the first installment in a series about the people, places & things from my recent trip to America…

In just about every small town in America, there’s a little shoe store that carries quality brands for local customers. Many of these shoe stores are a family business that have been serving generations.

I guess I’m lucky because where I come from, our local family-run shoe store is Sears Shoe Store in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.

This store has nothing to do with Sears, the big American department store chain.  Rather, it’s owned by the Sears family who have been shoeing people of the Tennessee Valley for decades.  My grandparents shopped there for work shoes as well as “Sunday shoes,” my parents still shop there, and when I’m in the States, I shop there for myself and my children.

Sears is chock full of all kinds of quality footwear goodness for men, women & children, representing the best brands from the United States as well as fashion brands known around the world.

The thing I love most about Sears is that you can always find dead stock somewhere in their cavernous maze of shoes.  If you ask the staff, they can pull just about anything out of their floor-to-ceiling stacks of shoes.

This includes vintage baby shoes, ladies heels from the 1960s or, as I asked for & got on a recent visit, a pair of white Converse All-Star high tops that were Made in U.S.A. It is also exactly the place I knew I could find a very rare pair of Spalding Saddle Oxfords, which are now one of my most prized pair of shoes.

Sears is a local legend.  But for me personally  it’s a constant treasure trove of dead stock classic vintage finds and the source for all the best Made in America shoes.