The grey paint on the plywood floor has been worn away where Felix stands. Ranges of bare wood reveal the compass of his days, in front of the edge trimmer, metal fast, heel sander, finishing machine.

His name is not Felix, although that is what most of his customers, and occasionally even his wife, call him. Born in 1936 in Greece, Christos Soillis left home at the age of 11 to become a shoemaker. His family paid the apprentice school tuition in olive oil because they had so little money.

On his second day in this country, in 1963, he visited Harvard Square and told himself that one day he would own a show repair store here. he liked being around "young people, smart people, all sorts of kinds of people, poor people, rich people, all the happy people. "He spoke only Greek, worked three jobs simultaneously, saved money. On Saturday and Sunday nights he worked in Harvard Square's Felix shoe Repair, then located in the Massachusetts Avenue lot occupied toddy by Gnomon Copy. In 1969 Christos bought Felix Shoe Repair from the grandson of the original owner.

The shop has since moved to a basement location beneath Ferranti-Dege. In the front room, a glass display case contains silicone spray, Lexol leather conditioner, stain protector, suede dye, wooden shoe stretchers Fiebing's edge ink, Cavalier leather balm, shoelaces, shoehorns, three dozen tones of Meltonian creme polish.

Felix spends his days in the back room with the worn floor. On a shelf, penny-loafers, hiking brogans, wingtips, tall black boots, high heels lie scattered in various states of disrepair, waiting to be doctored. The Calendar was a gift from the Lawrence Leather and Shoe Findings Co. The wall clock carries the legend "Neolite Soles and Heels." Nailed to the wall there is a horseshoe painted blue and white, the colors of the Greek flag. The horseshoe was a gift from a noted law professor, a regular customer.

One morning I visit Felix and the battered radio is tuned to a Greek station broadcasting out of Lynn. Felix wears black wool pants, a short-sleeved office shirt open at the collar, anonymous black shoes, and a blue denim smock smudged with glue stains. He is rebuilding the worn toe of a woman's two-hundred-dollar cobalt-blue Salvatore Ferragamo.

Shaking Felix's hand is like putting on a tight leather glove. His fingers are short, thick, powerful, with the nails trimmed close. Fingertips are black with polish, calloused, and scuffed like rough-cut pine. The skin is cracked splintered, not just on the tips but down the finger to the palm, He is strong, but not with the manicured muscles of the beauty parlor weight room. His barrer-shaped forearms have been built by forty years of intense, detailed work, banding thick leather to his bidding.

Felix tears the soles off shoes, pastes barge glue onto leather, hammers the new sole on and pares away the excess. His head angles forward after a lifetime of looking downward. Without interrupting the rhythm of his work he says, "So what questions do you have?" I ask him to talk about his work.

"I'm happy. I'm happy to be a shoemaker.Sometimes and I am so happy that I could dance. Ilove what I do. Thanks God I come to this country.I build a trust in people. People come to me fromall over. Look: the owner of these shoes come from802 area code-that's somewhere in Vermont.

"That's what I tell my son Steven. Findsomething you like to do. Some fathers tell theirchildren, 'Be a doctor. Be a lawyer. Be, be, be.'Not me. Money is good, but happiness is better."

Felix arrives at work at seven-thirty in themorning and works without lunch until eight ornine at night. Fifteen-hour days are not uncommon.After closing he will relax by working two orthree hours doing "reps," repairs on purses andbags and zippers, work on the sewing machine thatdoes not get finished during the day.

He answers the telephone and keeps on paintingthe soles with glue. A minute talking is a minutelost. Within reach are the tools of his trade:knives, pliers, punch, awl, pincers, hammers.There are a score of old shoe-boxes filled withvarious grades and thicknesses of leather andrubber. There is a box of scraps used to fill upthe hollow chambers is the heel of a woman's shoe.

A leather shoe has four main parts: the upper,the lining inside the upper, the insole directlyunderneath the foot and the outsole which scrapesthe pavement. Until the middle of the 19thcentury, all shoes were made by hand. Massproduction had to wait for the rival of a machinethat could sew the upper to the sole. Gordon McKayarrived in 1860 with the McKay sole-sewingmachine, an improved version of the one LymanBlake patented in 1858.

McKay could not have had better timing. TheCivil War brought him an order for 25,000 boots.He filled it. By 1873 his machines were turningout 50 million pairs of shoes a year. McKay becamerich and gave Harvard four million dollars, whichendowed not just one or two professorships, but anentire department--the Division of AppliedScience. Shoe technology has not changed muchsince McKay's time. McKay would recognize theLandis Aristocrat sewing machine that stands inFelix's workspace.

Felix was trained to build shoes from scratch.Now he does repairs only, but sometimes that meansrebuilding a shoe from very little. On hisworkbench there is a an English calf-high bootwith the soles ripped off, the welt in tatters,only the upper remains. "This job will take morework, I don't make no money doing this, but I knowthis customer long time, sometimes you got to putin special effort, and then he tells other people,other people, other people, and I don't need toadvertise."