Henry's and Gene's Boot Shop

Researchers say that the sense of smell is the one most directly tied to memories. You know, the scents that instantly bring you back to childhood-- grandma's cookies, pencil shavings, pizza for hot lunch on Fridays and the chlorine from pools in the summer. One whiff of a particular scent can send you reeling back to your youth in an instant. Still, I was surprised by how many people mentioned "the smell" when I asked them about Henry's and Gene's Boot Shop, two of Fairfield's iconic stores of the 1970's.

When asked about Henry's, Sharon (La Valla) Mucci said, "I would always go through the back where all the jeans and dressing rooms were. Ah... those old creaky wood floors. I can still smell that Henry's scent!"

"You had to go to Henry's for pants," said Alan Mackenzie. "It reeked of pants, floor to ceiling, but it was quick tailoring."

When I mentioned the smell to my neighbor, Dolores Abbott, she said she could recall that scent, too. "Yes, I remember," she said. "It was a cross between denim and dust and paper."

For all you Fairfield newcomers, Henry's was located in a strip of shops on the Post Road where Borders is now. There was Fairfield Department Store, Fairfield Stationer's, Gene's Boot Shop, Henry's and Finishing Touch.

You could enter any of these stores through the front door, but most people parked in the back parking lot (where the parking garage is today), and went in through the back door.

In the case of Henry's, you'd walk through a narrow door into the back room (with the aforementioned creaky wood floors) where Levi's were stacked floor to ceiling. If I recall correctly, there was a tall library ladder rigged up to access the uppermost stacks of pants.

Henry's was the place to get your Levi's, Lee's, corduroys and jean jackets. The front of the store housed the men's dress pants and shirts. I stayed in the back where tape measures were constantly being whisked out and I was measured for waist, hips and length.

"We always went to Henry's for all of our jeans and pants," said Melissa (Tomasulo) Stewart. "My one memory is him shouting to his workers the size of Levi jeans I needed and then some jean elf would appear with your size.  If they were too long someone would tailor them right on the spot, pinning them up to the perfect length.  He would always talk about how skinny I was and ask my mom if she wanted the waist to be taken in as well.  I would always get my jeans back with this big stitched side, and my mom would think that was the greatest thing for her skinny child.  She always requested the jeans with reinforced knees for my brother Jason. I don't know what they were called but apparently they worked and his jeans did not tear in the knees."

In the 1980's, Henry's had to keep up with the times and started stocking "designer jeans"—Sasson, Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein, Sergio Valente. Alas, I never moved out of the Levi's phase, thus relegating me to the B-list crowd at best. I take comfort in other people's tales of woe, like that of Coleen (Zeleny) Fitch. "Mom used to take my sister and me there for 'Polo' shirts ... you know the ones, with the tiger on them? Can you imagine how embarrassing that was to have a tiger rather than a crocodile? They went nicely with my fake Keds though."

As with most of the stores in Fairfield center at the time, Henry's wasn't meant to last. "I remember watching 'the' Henry age and then hearing he had passed on to the great men's wear store in the sky and knowing that that wooden counter and vast pant storage area was not long for this world, either," said Abbott. "This was akin to watching Mr. Klein in Westport hobble around the store, looking for the correct pen refill, and then charging it to our Klein's account, but now I have digressed to Westport."

When there was a trip to Henry's, there was almost certainly a stop at Gene's Boot Shop. "It was a big deal going there for school shoes," said Mucci. "I can still picture Gene and that big sales guy with the curly brown hair. I used to love seeing Buster Brown inside my shoe, and the balloon and lollipop only added to the excitement." Just as tape measures were standard at Henry's, those metal foot measurers were always in use at Gene's. "We went to Gene's boot shop for all of our shoes," said Stewart. "He knew me by name, and we always went one week before school to get new shoes. I remember there being so many children in that shoe shop right before school started. I would see kids I knew and we would talk as we got our feet measured. It was such a big thing to go get the new school shoes. And," she added, "it smelled great in there too."