Boots

Footwear is important to me.  I stand all day in front of a class and have to look reasonably presentable.  Boots are something I like: You can slip them off and on and don’t have to mess with laces.  I have a pair of well used Boulet boots, grey and black, that fit like slippers on the feet.  They’re cowboy boots:  Pointy-toed fence climbers with a two and a half inch stacked Cuban heel and enough ornate stitching on the hafts to make a gigolo blush.

Boots in Texas are another matter.  In the boot store you are confronted by an amazing set of choices.  Heels tell you a lot about the boot.  A stacked heel is not a working heel, meaning, you don’t ride a horse with a stacked heel.  It will catch on the stirrups and drag your ass across the field.  Pointy toe?  Useful, but with a steel toe in there you don’t worry about dropping a forklift on your feet. Shanks?  Arch, haft or both? Steel or Composite? 

I was fortunate that I had a guide.  He looked like he fell from a Marlboro ad.  A Stetson, check shirt, dress boots and well-worn jeans that had creases pressed in them.  Tim, the gentleman who served me, had some questions that I will attempt to translate from Texan.

"Whakindabeutsy’allwan?"  I asked to see some different kinds because I wasn’t sure what I wanted. He loped me over to a rack of boots Themsstrichonstaxwitsteeaall Gotemnickelshoesntipsdressemupstishentoo."  Which, I think, meant, Ostrich leather on a stacked heel with a steel shank.  Nickel-plated shiny bits on the heel and around the boot toe with dressy stitching on the boot haft.  Not quite what I had in mind, as they were in tones of red and I prefer not to look like a Guadalajara Male Prostitute.

After a few more suggestions and counter suggestions, Tim understood that I was fairly conservative in my footwear.  The other major consideration was the leather.  There are some restrictions on what I can bring back.  For instance, Lizards are out, especially rare ones, snakeskin and ocelot eyelids stitched with endangered species entrails over a last of elephant with ivory and pearl inlay. Customs and Immigration tends to frown on this kind of footwear and likes to confiscate it.  Same with colours:  No green, no white, blue, grey, turquoise bits, orange, or yellow with tan and grey.

"Howambowaroperanaplanetoe?"  Translates as "How about a roper with a plain toe?"  A roper is a working boot with a low heel and very little stitching on the toe.  The fancy stitching is up high on the haft, where the cow shit can’t get into the stitches.  The toe is just nicely rounded and the boot is built to stand around in for hours and hours on end.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

We settled on kangaroo as the leather. Soft as a virgin’s thigh.  In a colour of black, deep as a lawyer’s heart.  A plain rounded toe.  Some nice stitching up high with nylon reinforcements to not set off the security alarms at the airports. I slip them on. They clasp my toes like an infant holding a parent’s hand.  Walking about, the feets are making happy noises. 

"Yallgawhavahahawtwithat"  OK, show me some hats! After a few, a nice Resistol felt, a real Stetson and a black Loren with a rainbow feather crest, I decided that a hat would not work on this old head.  Perhaps a wise choice.

The boots are still comfortable and now that I’ve scuffed the soles and can actually get traction, they’re wearing in perfectly.  In another year, they’ll feel like slippers.