Assembling a shoe

Moving to and fro vigorously in his brown rocking chair and punctuating his explanations with gestures, Marcel Charron tells us about some of the stages involved in making a shoe.

Transcript:

The first step: at the bottom there, they trimmed the soles.  The second step: there’s a wooden shape.  A wooden shape that you can insert into your shoe; we called it a last.  And then, on that shape there, they’d glue an insole, was what we called it.  There were two spots.  The bottom of the wooden last was made of metal and it had two little holes and the guy would put a sole there, an insole and he’d tack (hammer).  That was the start of it, then he’d make thirty pairs.

By the way, t’was one of my uncles, we called him Ti-corps Fortier (who did that).  Him, he did just that and he didn’t want to do nothing else.  Him there, he’d put in (his) trap, we called it that, in (his) mouth two types of tacks (staples).  Them tacks, they were little brackets we used to work the shoe way back when. Not like today; today it’s all glued (shoes).  Way back when, we’d nail it all down with tacks.  My uncle, him, he’d take out two types of tacks, he’d take the box and he’d empty out on the one side, empty out on the other side.  Yeah, well, up to you to believe me.  Ain’t nobody else gonna tell you that story because I don’t think nobody else remembers this, he’d cough back and sip of Pepsi in the middle of all that, him.