CowboyBootStories.Com

I grew up in New Mexcio and loved wearing boots. After college, I joined the navy. During one of our many moves, we stopped in Ohio. While there, I helped my new in-laws relay their leech bed for the sewer, just trying to be a good son-in-law, It totally ruined my boots. I was never able to replace my boots. After 25 years in the Navy, we retired to Virginia. Now my 3 girls are grown and looking for boots! I am most happy to help them pick them out, but have yet to ever find the right boots to replace the ones I ruin 25 years ago.
Paul Smith

Congratulations  Martha Allen, of Florida

This is our second week of sponsoring the Cowboy Boot Story project.

The second week brought some great stories, and we have heard that the Country Music Writers Guild is now using the cowboy boot story website as a source for inspiration…
The winner of the $200 prize towards the cowboy boots of their choice is… Martha Allen of Florida, Martha wrote a story titled Two miles of Fence, Six pounds of Mudd

 Martha will be allowed to pick out a new pair of boots and leave the old boots in the pasture

Congratulation Martha, you can claim your new boots today. (or anytime in the near future, just watch your email for details)

There once was a boy from Texas who loved his boots. Dancing, rodeos, or just around the house, having them on his feet just felt right. One day he got a call telling him that he had the opportunity of a lifetime. Luckily, his boots where going to get the same opportunity. The young man had received a promotion, and would now be traveling internationally for work. Though this was a great thing professionally, he was most excited about where his boots would get to travel. The first stop they made was in cold Montreal. Though it was cold, with thick sox and his boots he was able to make it through the snow to see Mount Royale, the Olympic stadium, and the underground city. As work continued the boots travel many miles (kilometers). From tropical Singapore and the Merlion, St Paul’s Cathedral, Stonehenge, and the dreary weather of England, Pyramids, Sphinx and the desert dryness in Egypt, and even to the Opera House and the top of the Sydney harbor bridge, his boots traveled with him enduring it all. From hot to cold, wet to dry, under the ground to up on a bridge his boots stood up to the job. Most of all, everyone he met loved his boots. “Ooo those are cool!”, “Where can I get a pair?”, “Do they have other colors?”, “I will buy them from you right now.”, he heard it all. The epidemic had spread. Soon boots will go global, not just any boots, but the boots just like the ones he bought from Boot City. So next time you travel and you are packing your bags, remember the boots and think of the good times you will have.

During the rainy season, in Oklahoma. We had a large Brama Bull. He always thought the grass was always greener on the other side. Being the big boy that he was, he was constantly busting through the fence. It so happened on this particular day ,James, the bull named after one of our cantankerous rancher friends, decided to bust the fence during the coldest rainiest day of that Month. Well here I go -hat on my head, running pulling on my coat as I went, grabing gloves,wire, posts and pliers. I had to get to the fence fast because we had two ponies and several calves on the ground. They would follow James at the drop of a hat. I made it, fixed the fence, got back to the house. I was heart broken when I looked down at my feet. I had been in such a hurry, I had forgotten I was wearing my good boots. My Boots were full of mudd, each in fact had three pounds of mudd- inside and out. I loved my denim blue tall top boots. They were my favorite, I lost them to two miles of fence and six pounds of mudd. I never have been able to find another pair like them to this day.

Life as a farmer in southeastern Idaho during the ’50s and ’60s was a struggle. A good farmer would be able to predict which crops were going to bring the best prices, and plant them in the spring. Ultimately nobody really ever knew, so some years would be good and some would not. One good year my father felt like he could afford a new pair of boots and he bought a pair of Tony Lamas. He always said that ‘you never have to apologize for quality’ and was more proud of those boots than any farmer on the Tyhee Flats. From my 11-year old eyes they were about the prettiest thing I’d ever seen too!

Every year, as a male bonding event, and when the crops were in — hopefully before the first real snow — we’d load up the horses and camping gear and head for higher country…into the places where the air was so clean it was sweet on your tongue, and the water in the creeks was still ice cold, no matter how warm August turned out.

That year we picked a site alongside a creek (if it had a name I forgot it years ago), hobbled the horses and started making camp. We didn’t figure that our horses were as smart as they were, and within minutes they had figured out how to run in hobbles, crossed the creek and were well on their way down the dirt road. When Dad saw that, he grabbed a rope, and without thinking ran through that creek with his new Tony Lamas on his feet. Needless to say, they were soaked by the time he returned to camp with the horses. He didn’t say much but you could tell that a poor farmer had just lost one of his prize possessions. All leather, he knew they would dry out, and never be the same special leather-soled boots.

When we returned from our adventure in the mountains, someone told Dad that if he’d mail the boots directly back to Tony Lama, they’d rebuild the boots and it wouldn’t cost as much as a new pair. Although it sounded like a tall Idaho tale, he did just that: mailed them back to Tony Lama.

I can’t tell you how excited Dad was to get the boot box in the mail, and to discover his boots, looking brand new. Either they’d just replaced them, or they somehow took them apart and put them back together with some magic…I’ll never know, but Tony Lama made that Idaho farmer…a guy that would be dirt poor this year and walking in tall clover the next, one very happy boy from Idaho…and didn’t charge him one cent!

Thanks Tony Lama. Dad is 87 years old this year. He had to give up raising horses a couple of years ago, yet one of his favorite stories is the one about his brand new Tony Lama Boots…and those darn horses who figured out how to run in their hobbles!

I was a big fan the President Reagan. Not only because of what he did to turn our country around after Jimmy Carter, but because he seemed like a regular, happy guy.
I remember as a teen, watching press shots of Reagan working on his Ranch in California. Those images were America, and they inspired me to want to be a cowboy. Not the herd the herd, rope the calf cowboy, but I man who lived the values of the west. I wanted to be as happy as President Reagan looked when he was riding his horse on his ranch.
I couldn’t afford the ranch or the horse, but I was able to save up to buy my first pair of boots. They were Tony Lama, they were inexpensive and they were mine.
Now, as an adult I can afford any pair of boots I like and I have little place to ride and I often think back to how the Gipper inspired me to be a happy American and how he inspired me to buy my first pair of boots.

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.

There isn’t a day I more cherrish than when I can slip on a pair of my favorite jeans only to be topped off with a pair of my boots.
The sun was up as I headed out to hop into my black pickup truck to enjoy my weekend. Oh I had a couple of errands to run, but it was still my schedule..not someone else’s. Stops included a visit to my parents, pay a few bills, and a trip to my hair stylist.
The day really was quite relaxing. As my day progressed I found myself at the end of my errands getting my hair cut. As the young lady trim my salt n pepper hair she commented that my beard and mustache need trimmed also. As any good cowboy does I heeded her words and left her do her thing. She then wanted to change the color of my facial hair to match what nature had left me on top of my head. Again I granted her this wish.
After she was done with eveything she stated how handsome I look now.

The moral of this story is that you should always “go with the flow”..because all Real Cowboys..die(hair-dye) with their boots on!!

I live in the Frisco Texas area and I am in need of one boot. It’s a Tony Lama 9 ½ D black lizard skin right boot. Unfortunately, due to an altercation at a Dallas Cowboys Vs. the Washington Redskins football game, I became separated from my boot. While out in the parking lot a Redskins fan became obnoxious and required special attention. And me being from the great state of Texas had to oblige. Three things are constant in Texas, everything is bigger, cowboy boots, and we are always happy to open up a can. Somewhere during the altercation I put my boot right up his posterior end and broke it off. Unfortunately, this left me with only one boot, but it left mister Redskins Fan speechless. Not to mention the Cowboys won, so all in all it was a good day.

After a long day at the office I rushed off to the airport to catch a flight from Dallas to Charleston, SC. This was before everyone had to remove their shoes, but after the tighter security started. So it is my turn to go through security, I am all set, laptop is out, belt is off, cell phone is tucked into a bag. I am ready to slide right through when the security guard, or whatever you call them told me to remove my boots. continue reading