Moment: Let it shine; Doctor Shine putting the pep into residents' shoes

They call him Doctor Shine.

The name is burned on the wooden sign hanging in the storefront window where he works. And it's a nickname that Arthur Ballanger is quick to point out he didn't bestow on himself. It comes from his customers, he says.

"They say I do good on their shoes," said Ballanger. "They always tell me as long as they can see their face in it, everything's all right."

Ballanger has been shining shoes at Kenton Shoe Shop on Broad Street for eight years now. He says there's an art to it, the way he swivels his wrist and holds his brush, but there's also a degree of muscle memory.

Growing up, Ballanger's father made him shine his own shoes before church and Sunday school every week, working the leather "until they were shined right." Occasionally that meant shining them more than once. He's got the hang of it now.

A customer steps up onto the platform against the wall and takes his place in the lime-colored chair, putting his feet up. It starts with saddle soap, Ballanger's hands working with quick precision. Wash the shoes, dry the shoes, polish and shine them. Then shine them a little more.

Last is the sole dressing, drawn from wells at the base of the chair and painted along the sides of the shoe soles. Ballanger is careful to match the color of the liquid to the soles of the shoes. Some brown shoes have black soles. He pays attention.

"It's just like washing your car," Ballanger said. "If you clean your car but you don't do your tires, it ain't gonna look good."

Ballanger takes pride in the fact that he polishes the loafers and oxfords of prominent lawyers, judges and businessmen and women. The people who run the city do so with his special touch. Ballanger has had customers come from as far as Knoxville to drop off a bag of shoes they'll return to pick up a couple of weeks later.

"Even if you're wearing a five hundred dollar suit," Ballanger says, if "your feet looking raggedly, it ain't gonna work."

And at the end of each day, Ballanger bends down and shines his own boots, before he closes up shop.

photo Arthur Ballanger, nicknamed Doctor Shine, shines a shoe in Kenton Shoe Shop on Broad Street. Ballanger has been shining shoes there for eight years and says there's an art to his polishing.

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