Chris Ryan
Mike Ryan at work in his Helena bootmaking shop.
HELENA — Mulish perseverance and defiant self-sufficiency are as much a part of a craftsman’s longevity as flair and skill.
Helena bootmaker Mike Ryan, a native of Brusett, has never been one to put his fate in others; his fate stays in his own hands.
Those hands — resembling the stubby, muscular claws of a bear — turn, twist and shape boots on his assembly line of one. Those sawdust-discolored, rock-solid paws peg the soles, rather than nail them, with beeswax-covered wooden pegs. Those hands look incapable of exhaustion.
“I look forward to work here every morning, and that’s something most people don’t do,” Ryan said. “You got to have your freedom, your independence. I know what I’m facing every day, and that’s why I like working here. I don’t do it for the money. My freedom. It’s a cool deal.”
Ryan’s shop at 919 Euclid Ave. is a bit of a joy ride: there is the momentum of concentrated work in a setting of blackened tables and vintage heavy machinery. And there is laughter, there are visitors, there is the sustained banter with his daughter and assistant, Chris.
When locked in his work, however, Ryan is never distracted. He stands alert against the backdrop of rows and rows of boots, stacks of old-fashioned lasts (shoe and boot molds), and vintage industrial-strength tools and machines. On his homemade work bench there are seven pairs of boots in many stages of assembly — one requires the attention of the sole-stitchery, then a pause, and then another is worked on with a stretcher. Then Ryan is on to the next boot.
Lining the shop wall, there are approximately 1,200 pairs of lasts, including ropers and pointed toe, narrow and round toe, square toe, narrow square toe, wide square toe, as well as loggers and packers.
“Most people don’t know the difference,” Ryan said, pointing to a pair of steel-toed boots he is resoling for a local trucker who works in the North Dakota oil fields.
Ryan is a throwback to the days of finger-dialed phones and face-to-face conversations.
Chris Ryan
Ryan says a pair of handmade boots will last seven times longer than a factory-made pair.
“I’m a mechanic, a marriage counselor, all the things you need to be qualified for shoe making. People come in and bring up that this happened and that happened. You need to step aside and listen.”
He scoffed at the conventions of a throwaway society.
“It’s all disposable,” he said. “Microwaves and appliances go to the dump because it costs less than repairs. Shoes are the same way.”
Boots made in Ryan’s shop are the antithesis of disposable, the enemy of temporary. Their exacting detail is impressive, but their longevity makes them even more valuable.
“They will outlast a boot made in a mass-produced factory by seven times, if taken care of,” he said.
Ryan, 62, was born and raised in Brusett, northwest of Jordan in Garfield County. He remembers receiving an Acme boot catalog in the mail in 1962. That catalog planted the seed of later exploration. He served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1973, then used veterans assistance programs to help subsidize bootmaking courses in trade school.
In 1985, he apprenticed under Mike “The King of the Bootmakers” Ives of Lockwood, the unincorporated town across the Yellowstone River from Billings. From Ives he learned how to individualize the personality of each boot.
“He was an old guy when he taught me,” Ryan said. “In the 1930s, he had to support his family as a cabinet maker, and then he took up bootmaking, because people had to have shoes. I guess what I learned from him was that you’ve got to have the want — the want to do it.”
Ryan moved to Helena in 1986 and relocated to Euclid Avenue a few years ago. There were five bootmakers in Helena when he started. Ryan has outlasted them all.
“The one thing that hasn’t changed with my boots since then is the lack of nails. I peg the arches, sew the soles. These are all wooden-pegged. Peg the arch, peg the heel on. The only steel that’s in these boots is the nails that hold the heel cap on and the steel arch.
“I put in about 24 man-hours in a pair of boots. About 16 hours in a pair of laceups. I can make seven pair of laceups in two weeks, easy. Eight pairs of cowboy boots takes me about a month, or close to it. I’m not making very good wages, but it’s kind of fun.”
“Bootmaking is gone,” he said. “People in Europe make shoes. I don’t know of anyone overseas that makes boots. It’s gone. It’s over. There are a few people.”
As soon as he completes this sentence, another thought springs into his head.
“I would like the governor of the state of Montana to look at his Chinese shoes while he is putting them on in the morning. I want him to look down at them, and wonder why he has a pair of Chinese shoes, when he could have a pair made right here. Why is he wearing Chinese shoes when he could come down here and have them made?”
At 62, Ryan is thick-skinned, opinionated, genial and full of know-how. And he is still learning: a few years ago he went to a school to learn how to make men’s dress shoes.
“People that retire, they quit doing stuff and they die,” he said. “When I retire, I’m going to make boots.”
