By accident a friend was traveling the back roads in the Northeast and happened upon a small tannery. Since he had never been in a tannery, he stopped. Boy, were his eyes opened. This small tannery has had a loyal following of boot makers going back many years, when "Yankee ingenuity" and "Yankee thriftiness" were important traits for survival. And now that most of the large shoe manufacturing is now done out of the country, tanneries like this one struggle to keep the art of oilless leather from disappearing.

While leather tanning has been round for eons of years, leave it to the New Englanders to take tanning to a much higher level of almost an art form. There were a lot of buildings in various states of dilapidation. While some were not used, or so he was told, all had foot paths leading in and out of at least one door. Going into one that was sort of set back into a low hill, the musty smell reminded him of his grandmother's root cellar in the fall with apples, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, maybe beets and onions and other smells so distant now. But this was a working tannery, pits and barrels of chemicals, hides soaking, drying, being scraped, stretched and otherwise worked on. Not a whole lot of light, but the handful of men seemed to knowingly go about their work.

While the tour was graciously given, their secrets were not. He related to the few words that real downeasterners are given to utter...few and far between. But true to their heritage of being thrifty Yankees in addition to their lack of verbosity, one of the younger generation explained to him that the trait of thriftiness that so often is only applied by outsiders to monetary items, in realty permeates their culture, particularly on how work is viewed.

Hundreds of years ago leather played a very critical part in their lives. Outer garments, shoes, saddles, gloves, tack for horses, etc. required a lot of time to maintain all the leather. This is where the Yankee thriftiness and ingenuity came into play. The thrifty Yankees figured out to reduce maintenance they had to become more thirty in oiling their leather. To achieve this thriftiness of labor, a leather was created to be water resistant, oil resistant and weather resistant, hence the anagram WOW. My friend knew I worked with leather and knew I would die for something like this. Well, the thrifty Yankee was not about to give my friend any leather, but he would sell him one hide. How my friend got the whole hide to me is another story, but I have now developed a good working relationship with this tannery and subsequently thereafter all my leather is WOW™ Leather.

A reduced maintenance leather that requires NO OIL, is scuff resistant, and has a greater gloss retention is featured in all their leather products. No claim to "maintenance free", but occasional waxing will prolong the shine that the captain likes to admire.

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