By Janet Scribbler, southwest posted April 3rd, 2009
I have always loved cowboy boots. I only had one pair my whole childhood. Secondhand roughouts. At five years of age, by best friend Tommy had two pair. One pair for everyday wear and another we called, “dress up boots”. I would go to his house, and those boots were just sitting there, in the almost empty room, with the sun reflecting off the near perfect polish of new boots, mocking my tennis shoe enclosed feet. I never saw them worn, as we rarely went anywhere to “dress up”. I asked and asked for my next birthday for a new pair of boots. I would go to sleep at night, dreaming of a new pair of tall polished boots. It was not meant to be.
By middle school I finally got a pair of hand me downs from some unknown stranger and proudly wore them to school, only to be mocked by girls in the P.E. locker room that girls weren’t supposed to wear boots. They weren’t tall boots anyway, so I stopped wearing them.
In high school a Western store owner took a charitable outlook to my large family and let us come in and pick out brand new clothes and boots. I found the perfect tall Tony Lamas and wore them home. By now, I wouldn’t wear them to school but would keep them safe at home, like Tommy’s dress up boots. Of course, my horseman mother couldn’t stand to see a pair of boots not covered in manure and wore them every day into the corral. Soon my perfect boots were not fit to wear, except in the corral. It was years before I bought another pair of boots. They are navy blue tall Tony Lamas ands they sit in the corner with rolled up magazines in them, so they will be straight and perfect for the “dress up” occasions I love wearing them to. I even wear them with dresses, a practice horsewomen of my childhood would have never done. Only people from big cities and Santa Fe would do that.
