Now that Jesse Turner is moving on at the age of 86, thousands of people in the area will no doubt will be wondering, “Now what will we do?”
Turner, who’s owned the Berlin Shoe Box for decades and seems to have worked there since the beginning of time, is one of those people out-of-towners might not have seen on a regular basis, but they knew where he was when you needed him.
By “out-of-towners,” we mean Ocean Pines, Ocean City, West Ocean City and the surrounding area, because everyone who ever had a favorite pair of shoes or boots that were too good to give up, but too worn to wear knew exactly what to do — take them to the Shoe Box, where this exceptionally nice gentleman would bring them back to life.
Berliners, of course, know Mr. Turner best. Besides his seemingly eternal business presence, he has involved himself in the community for decades.
But alas, time passes and businesses like the Shoe Box are fading into history. We’re more inclined these days to throw things away and replace them rather than have them returned to their nearly original condition.
It’s just easier, a good many people would be apt to say, but then they would have deprived themselves of the opportunity to encounter a truly nice man and one of the few remaining craftsman of an earlier era.
True, repairing shoes is not writing computer algorithms, or developing the next smartphone app or engineering driverless vehicles, but then again we don’t know those people. We do, however, know Mr. Turner and will miss his Main Street presence.
We hope he enjoys his retirement after 68 years of work in this and his other business enterprises, but the question remains for many of us, what will we do now?