Man has business nailed as boot maker
Boot maker follows in father's steps
By CINDY Kahler THOMAS Special to the Times Record News
Sunday, June 21, 2009
WICHITA FALLS — The Burk Boot Shop is a really good fit for this Wichita County town.
The shop, owned by Armando and Patricia Dominguez, is a place where customers can get their shoes repaired, buy a gift, have custom-boots made or just stop by for a chat to get to know the couple. After all, they have a story to tell. Both are originally from Mexico.
“In October of 1967, my father moved us form Matamoros, Mexico, to Burkburnett and opened the Burk Shoe Repair,” Armando said.
The family of five lived in a one-room apartment that was the back of the shop.
“After a year, my mom threatened my father, and they bought a house,” he said.
But moving to the house didn’t keep Armando out of the shop.
“I grew up in this shop. I started out sweeping the floors and hand stitching penny loafers. I caught on pretty fast,” he said. “I must have sewn hundreds of penny loafers.”
By the time he graduated high school, he thought that repairing shoes was the last thing he wanted to do, so he took a job that involved labor, “but it didn’t last but a couple of months.” He even went to Midwestern State University for a while, but felt he didn’t fit in.
“But I knew how to repair shoes, so I took a job in Wichita Falls. I was making more money there. He paid me more than my dad did, and I was making enough money to buy a car,” he said.
Armando met his future wife in 1988 in Mexico at his cousin’s wedding; and after two years of long-distance dating, they married. History repeated itself as the honeymooners lived in a large apartment attached to their shoe repair business in Wichita Falls.
“We lived there one year, and I got pregnant, so we moved into a house,” Patricia said, “The fumes from the glue were strong and not good for a pregnant woman.”
“Eventually we got rid of that shop, and we moved to Burk,” Armando said.
Armando’s father turned over the shop to his only son, but his father still made the custom boots. However, after the birth of Armando’s second child, his father told him that he needed to make more money, so lessons began on how to make those boots.
Armando’s boots are much fancier than his father’s boots, but he is grateful for the skills passed down to him and is making good use of them.
With the downturn of the economy, his boot-making business has slowed some, but that makes it that much easier for customers to get their boots more quickly. Now there is no longer an 18-month wait to get a pair. According to Armando, there is only a five-month wait.
Life for Patricia was hard in America. She spoke almost no English, and she found it very difficult to communicate with the world around her. One day her son’s teacher called. When she got to the school, she asked him why he had an “accident” and he told her that he didn’t know how to say “will you help me unbuckle my belt” in English.
“So I came home and said, ‘That’s it. I have to learn how to speak English,’” Patricia said.
After years of lessons, she still felt embarrassed when trying to speak English because of her pronunciation. Then she took a job at a restaurant.
“The first two days I had diarrhea because I was so nervous, but within two weeks I was talking to the customers with no problem at all,” Patricia said. “My boss had to tell me to quit talking so much.”
Now Patricia is on the Telemundo television station telling Spanish-speaking people about English lessons in Burkburnett. Her segment airs from 5 to 10 every Monday in June.
“I tell them about the time and place, and what we do and how we do it,” she said. “I am so passionate about it. It is so important to me because I lived through not being able to communicate. I had to rely on others to go with me to the doctor, or the store, or anywhere I needed to ask questions or answer questions. I didn’t like that feeling.”
The lessons are at Central Baptist Church. Transportation is provided, as well as child care.
“So now there is no excuse not to learn English, but you have to want it to do it,” she said.
Things have changed for Patricia. Now she helps translate for others and even offers her help in tutoring.
She has a new retail section of the shop, thanks to the Burkburnett Development Corporation. The corporation is a group of business owners that are promoting businesses in Burkburnett.
With the downturn in the economy, large boot-makers were trying to lure Armando away from Burkburnett. The corporation got wind of it and set their sights on keeping the boot shop in Burkburnett.
“Kelly Bolin, director of the corporation, kept asking me to go to a small business boot camp in Colorado,” Patricia said. “I was worried that my English wasn’t good enough, but she said ‘I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me you are coming,’ so I told her I would come.”
Patricia learned a lot at the camp and is applying it to their store. The corporation even gave the couple money and physical help to get their store ready for a retail crowd. Now it is decorated in a rustic Western theme and sells shirts, purses, crosses, shoes, decorative signs and much more. And Armando and Patricia are planning to open a Web site to expand their boot-making business.
She said that every third Friday is Downtown Madness. The businesses stay open until 8 p.m. and have activities to draw in customers. The boot shop has had salsa dancing and snacks and drinks. The downtown area has had Easter egg hunts, live entertainment, and even trick or treating.
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