Molly Monahan, The Motorcycle Mechanic Turned Garlic Farmer Turned Small-Town Cobbler

When you grow up in a shoe repair shop directly next door to your actual house, it's hard to not catch the cobbling bug. But oh did Molly Monahan try to resist.

After learning how to repair motorcycles and doing some farming for a bit, Molly one day told her mother "we're opening the shop back up!" and immediately put mom back to work making leathergoods, before realizing she herself barely knew how to repair a damned thing.

Over a decade (and four kids, who themselves are growing up in a cobbler shop!) later, Molly and Sally run the reborn Saleigh Mountain Co., the epitome of a folksy, small-town, repair-everything shop in Hermann, Missouri. I chatted with Molly about the crucial importance of  local shops in a world where high-end customization operations are thriving, the boots that have carried her through it all, and perhaps most importantly, piddling. Man is there a lot of piddling in this episode.

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