(relaxed piano music) - I guess the real beginning in how we wound up here is my wife's family has been going to Crystal Lake since 1905, and I married into it and about 20 years ago, we decided to move up here full-time.

Because we knew the Frankfort area very well, ran into one of the shopkeepers, she was the daughter of the guy that had actually opened the original shoe store in the 1930s and she said, "Eh, I'm interested in selling my shoe store," well, I'm fourth-generation shoe business, grew up in it.

- [Chris] Jim sure did grow up in it.

His grandfather Steven had multiple shoe stores in Wisconsin, and his great-grandfather... (indistinct) Had a store in Grand Haven.

With a family tree that has more than a few pairs of shoes hanging from it, Jim's curiosity was piqued.

- The rafters were just above your head, and in the basement of the shoe store, shoes were piled up almost to the rafters, and not just on the wooden shells, in the aisles in-between, and when you turn the lights on, nothing really happened 'cause they were all buried in these mountains of shoes.

- [Chris] Now, Jim's daughter also plays an important role in this process.

Away at school in LA, she decided to give the vintage shoes a test drive or walk.

- After a month or so, we're on the phone with her and said, "You know, how are those shoes working out?"

She said, "These are the most comfortable dress shoes I've ever owned," considering she grew up in a shoe family, you know, it was like, "Wow, really?"

And she came back and made an arrangement with the owner to buy 6,000 pair, which is how this all kind of started and people started showing up here wanting to actually try things on, which is... To be honest, is my favorite way of doing things 'cause you need to feel 'em, you need to see 'em, and geez, it looks great but it hurts or it feels wonderful, you know, you really need to try 'em on, so we're... We invested in our fancy rug and chairs, and this became a showroom of sorts, and the thing that's unique about this inventory is not only, you know, started out with 6,000 pair, but they're all unworn in their original boxes, so from a vintage standpoint, you know, the shoes going back to the '30s, they're considered mint.

- [Chris] History and traditional shopping habits play a role in the available shoe inventory.

- We still have a couple thousand women's shoes, a typical family shoe store from that era, you know, 70%, 75% of the shoes would be women's, 20% kids, and then, you know, the rest men's.

Most family shoe stores, you know, women did the shopping, they shopped for the kids and men bought shoes mostly 'cause they had to, now, we do have, you know, some men's dress shoes, but mostly, what they carried in Frankfort were work shoes and boots, which was typical for this area and that era.

- [Chris] Jim has seen a lot of shoes in his time and knows his store is packed with an interesting inventory that showcases quality construction and materials.

- You hear the phrase frequently, "They don't make 'em like they used to," for this era of shoes, it's really true, it's not just the construction techniques that are different, but also the quality of materials.

The minute stitching in the older shoes, little teeny-tiny... Well, you know, they could still do that, but they don't do that because it's faster to use a bigger stitch, they figured out a bigger stitch still holds, one can argue it doesn't look as good, but it takes a third of the time, and time is money.

- [Chris] Arriving at A Vintage Sole is all part of the experience and the adventure.

Think, "Over the river and through the woods to A Vintage Sole, we go."

- The last shot here is a gravel road up a long quarter-mile hill down a long driveway, and can't find us, you can't come.

One of the things that that puts a smile on my face more than anything else is when a car pulls up driven by a boyfriend or, you know, husband or dad, in summer, the windows are down, it's like, "Why would you put a store here?"

This certainly is a destination shoe store and I don't really think of it as a shoe store per se, it's my barn, so it definitely is a destination.

- [Chris] What's the future for the soul of this vintage shoe store?

- Once they're gone, they're gone, we looked in other places to try to find inventory like this and it just doesn't exist, this is a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, if you would, and we'd be happy if they were all gone at a reasonable price and people use 'em, you know, the shoes were meant to be enjoyed, these shoes are too good to be kept in a box, and I joke with a lot of customers that these shoes have been waiting decades to meet you, and they're... They want you to adopt them, and take them home and use them, that's the whole point of why they were made in the first place.

(dramatic whooshing)