I used to think that I needed to wear cowboy boots all day long. I wore out most pairs that I had in just a few months. I never got along with the big brand name boots very good. They never seemed to fit the way that they should, and I had a hard time supporting companies that didn’t build there boots here in the United States or at least somewhere where you knew there were cowboys. I was in college when I finally figured out that I didn’t need to wear my cowboy boots all the time. It was perfectly acceptable to wear a pair of tennis shoes in the classroom or in the cab of a tractor when you were putting up hay. My feet thank me for this decision, turns out a pair of tennis shoes or flat soled work boots make a guy’s feet feel better at the end of a long day than a pair of heeled boots with a steel shank for riding in them.
Because I don’t wear cowboy boots all the time anymore, I have gotten in the habit of keeping a pair in the barn where I can grab them in a hurry when I catch a horse to go do a job. I was looking at that pair of boots this morning as I was changing them out for my everyday crap kickers. I wondered what kind of stories those boots could tell in the nearly ten years that I have owned and used them. They are in need of a set of heels and a full resole, a good oiling and it wouldn’t hurt to repair the stitching on one of the pulls. Those boots have been through a lot with me; I wore them to the funeral of a dear friend who I think about often. Those boots were worn when I brought my daughter home from the NICU when she was born six years ago, and they shared our first daddy daughter dance together when she was still hooked up to monitors and oxygen.
When those boots became the ones I wore for work, they were with me when we educated a stubborn bovine with a nylon rope when she wouldn’t come to the barn on a cold March night in the middle of a snowstorm. I was wearing those orange topped boots on the day we hauled the big gray horse to the vet because he had cut his neck on a fence post, a memory still evidenced by a blood stained mark on the toe of the left boot. There’s a pair of spurs that ride on the heels of those boots permanently that were given to me by my parents as a birthday present in high school. The spur straps were custom made by a fraternity brother of mine.
Probably the most vivid memory is the day I told the paramedic they couldn’t cut them off me as I was laying in the pasture after a major ranching wreck. His response was classic, “we don’t cut leather in the sandhills.” My boots might not be made for walking as the song would suggest, but they are apparently made for holding memories. This might be the only pair of boots that get permanently retired on a mantle in the house.
A good pair of boots is worth their weight in gold in my opinion. They should fit like a glove and be tougher than a box of ring shank nails. I guess that about does it for this time, remember to oil your boots on occasion and tuck your pant legs in the tops when the bull crap gets a little deep. Keep tabs on your side of the barbed wire and God Bless.