After I’d had my boots for 6 months or so and they were good and broken in, the star actor and principle dancer in a community theater production of “Oklahoma” spotted them, and said, “Wow, I wish I had boots like that to wear in this show. The boots they gave me just clomp on the floor and slip and slide and hurt my feet when I dance. Those look really comfortable.”
I said, “They really are, but I’ve never tried to dance in them. What size are your feet?” It turned out we were the same size, and, since “the show must go on”, I lent them to him for the run of the show. He tap danced, walzed, and two-stepped through 6 shows and many rehearsals, all the while saying that they felt as good as any shoes he’d ever owned. When he gave them back, they were none the worse for wear. A little leather protector and polish, and they looked just as good as the day I bought them. And I’d made a friend who now knows what it’s like to be in my shoes.
These Boots Were Made for Dancin’
By Paul Safyan, United States, posted April 6th, 2009
Boots Not to Be
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.
