Cowboy Boots for the Uninitiated

Continuing my quest to explain various aspects of Texas to furriners, Yankees, and the clue-less city folk out there living in Plano (often recently relocated from California, Ohio, Illinois, China, India, Vietnam, or  shudder ! New York City ! (to which the only acceptable response is always "get a rope!"- taken from an old commercial for Pace Picante sauce- see my post on salsa vs pico de gallo), I will now attempt to explain cowboy boots to those who have no idea how and when to wear them, and what kind to wear, and when, and where to buy them. Caveat: I am not a cowgirl ! I'm just a sixth generation Texan who has friends and family who own ranches, spent considerable time in my youth riding horses (western style), but I do not claim to be a rancher myself. I've always been a city gal, but I am quite observant and have lots of folk around me making various fashion statements that I can use to help you steer clear of embarrassing (and expensive) fashion faux pas.

First: Any native Texan can tell you that cowboy boots evolved back in the wild wild west as a practical form of footwear for riding the range. They had a tall, thick leather shaft (the part that goes up your leg) to protect your ankles and lower legs, when riding horses, from mesquite trees (which have thorns) and various other brush out there on the range with stickers and scraggly branches. (English riding boots do the same but are not as tough or thick.) Riders know that horses love to try to brush the inexperienced rider off by gliding through a thorn bush and hoping it makes the rider miserable or throws him off completely. Old cowboy boots are more utilitarian than decorative, and only came in two colors: dark brown or black. Even today, no self respecting man would ever be caught dead in any other color. Both girls and guys have every day/utilitarian models, and dress models. Girls can get away with wild colors for dress boots, but men need to stick to dark brown or black. (I made hubster, a Yankee, get rid of a pair some well-meaning but clueless family member bought him when he moved here because they were a light brown, almost beige color. Embarrassingly ugly! That's why you truly want to steer clear of anything you find on a "sale" rack......that just means no one else wanted them. There's a reason! Notice the shaft is fairly wide, to accommodate muscled legs to fit in to them.

You can do a search on the internet for old cowboy photos, the history of cowboys, etc and turn up a variety of pictures from this era, some with the boots worn inside/under the pants leg, some worn with the pants leg tucked in. (To tuck or not to tuck the pants material into the boot is a matter of personal preference, and often depends on circumstance. Sometimes you are protecting the fabric of your pants, sometimes you are protecting the boot. Depends on what you are doing. Generally speaking, it is OK to tuck the pants fabric into the boot while riding the range, but an affectation to do so in town. People will laugh at you if you are a man and walk around in the city with your pants leg tucked in to your boot like a Cossack or in the style of English riding boots. There's a reason cowboy jeans are flared! To fit over your boots! Girls can sometimes get away with it if they are cute, and their whole ensemble is "cowboy chic".) Because these boots evolved initially for riding horses, they had a pointy toe (easier to get into the stirrup in a hurry) and a 2-3 inch heel that was slanted or cantilevered under (helped you hook your heel, and keep it, into the stirrup, and did not bruise your horse's ribs). An old pair of boots, well worn and loved, will show wear marks on the toes and the heels, from actual use as originally intended. Thick leather soles could be replaced if that part of the boot wore out before the top did. The loops and holes at the top are designed for you to put your fingers in and pull them on. Utilitarian, all around.

A new pair of cowboy boots, like many kinds of boots, will be stiff when you first put them on but mold to your feet and soften up some as you wear them. They should be comfortable, however, from the beginning, because if they don't fit you just right, they never will. The best thing to do is to try on different pairs/brands, and find one that works for the shape of your foot. (I have an unusually high arch, and have to select shoes/boots that accommodate it. Hubster has wide feet, like a hobbit.) You don't want them to pinch , rub, or for your heel to slip while trying them on in a store.You definitely wear socks, crew or knee-high, with boots.

Looking at archives of old cowboy photos, you can tell a lot about the person in the photo from the boots on his /her feet. Dusty banged-up boots reveal someone who truly worked in them, and maybe could not afford a second pair. Fancy showy boots, with the pants leg hiked up so you can see them, reveal a dandy. In many old photos, I noticed, the cowboy has on a soft moccasin type boot with fringe around the top of the shaft, which brings me to my next point: wearing cowboy boots, as they were originally styled, all day in the city on concrete and other hard surfaces, isn't really that comfortable. Wearing them indoors with spurs attached was a no-no. That's why cowboy boots evolved into what are called ropers. (Originally after the brand that invented them, but now applied to all items in that category, much as Southerners call any soda pop or soft drink "coke".)

As the twentieth century progressed, people rode around their ranches less on horseback and shifted to using trucks to oversee the cattle. There arose a need for a still tough and practical cowboy boot that was comfortable to walk around in . Ropers keep the original features of a riding boot- the tough leather shaft and a vestigial heel, pull-on tabs at the top, but replaced the hard leather sole with a still tough but softer on your feet rubber sole. The toe is rounded for comfort. The heel is barely there. Originally purely practical, ropers were often simple, without all that fancy stitching (which, back in the day of a hand-made boot, held all the layers together, and was a maker's way of expressing his own unique brand.). Today you can buy a simple, working man's (or gal's) roper (often in tough thick suede, I don't know why), or a fancy one in various leathers/styles/colors. The shafts are not as tall as on original cowboy boots, because these are not used when riding horses. Wide shafts to fit real people. I myself have a pair in ostrich leather, and they are truly beautiful, comfortable, durable, and make great winter rainy-muddy-snow day boots.The same rules apply, in terms of colors, as before: men wear dark brown or black. Ladies wear dark colors for work, and fancy ones for dress. A popular ladies style roper for rodeos and other fun occasions has faux laces up the front, like granny's 1890's lace-up shoes. This past year, I have noticed my students (guys and gals) who are involved in the Ag program on campus wearing a squared-toe roper, called a snip-toe, that seems to be the rage of the moment.

A word about fancy dress cowboy boots: Attend a rodeo, livestock show, or Texas A&M University sometime and look at what real people are actually wearing. The men/boys will have on western style shirts in subdued plaids, stripes or solids. Dark western cut (boot cut or slightly flared) jeans, always pressed. (This is key: shirts and jeans are always starched and pressed. Never ever straight from the dryer or, god forbid, wrinkled or faded.) Dark roper boots under their pants leg. Older men often sport a dress shirt, an a outdoors-y sporting style, canvas or quilted hunting coat if it is cold, sometimes khaki type pants if not denim. UT frat boys will wear cowboy boots with baggy plaid shorts and matching solid color polo shirts, but this is a look that is hard to pull off if you are older than 22 because it is ridiculous. Cowboy hats are felt for winter, straw for summer, worn outdoors only, only by real ranchers. They are proportional to one's head size and do not have gigantic brims like the buffoons you see on TV (those are caricatures created to make people laugh !) Ladies will be wearing tight dark flared jeans, wild fancy colored boots (most often ropers) under those jeans, a cute top that is probably short sleeved or semi-revealing in some way, and long hair (often with bangs). The only folk wearing belts with big fancy buckles are the folks who won those belts riding bulls or performing some other rodeo talent.

Contrast those real life cowboy looks with the cowboy chic wanna-be's: these folk turn up in C&W bars in Austin or Dallas, or at fancy resorts in Colorado, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, often apres ski, strolling around restaurants and bars, shopping. They are wealthy city folk who indulge a fantasy of being a cowboy/cowgirl while on vacation, and they shop at tres expensive boutiques that sell trendy expensive western-themed fashion ensembles. This is where folk buy and wear the truly crazy patterns/styles/colors of (lately, retro styled with pointy curved toes and distressed to appear old and worn) old-fashioned high shaft cowboy boots. They have a narrow shaft bc the model thin rich people who can afford these boots don't want their legs to look fat. Folk want to show off what they just bought, so they wear them with the pants leg tucked in, (or in the case of ladies, with skirts) so you can see the boot designs. They are beautiful to look at but hideously uncomfortable, so no one wears them for long stretches- just out to dinner. Definitely not to dance in. (I went recently with some friends to a west Texas C&W dance hall that drew folk from a 5 county radius, and all the people there wore ropers to dance in.) Now I confess to owning a pair of these fashionable boots, too, (because I am a fashion maven) but I don't wear them in a heads-to-toe western outfit. That look spells "t-o-u-r-i-s-t" ! The Texas chic look is to mix in a little bit o' western wear with other items: some modern stuff. southwestern jewelry, lots of black, south American clothes or colors, and lately just a little bit of bling and /or animal print into the mix. The trick, as with any fashion ensemble, is to not overdo it: You are allowed only one "statement" piece at a time. That means only the cool boots, or the handbag, or one piece of big jewelry. Anything more is a fashion nightmare. By all means, avoid the white-trash version of this look: tacky over the top rhinestone encrusted, feather trimmed, zebra or cheetah print, cross embellished:  jeans, rubber thong sandals, handbag, earrings, t-shirts, necklaces, watches, strollers, baby outfits, sneakers, headbands for your baby, Bible bags, cars, home decor......you get the idea. To put this on your dog, however, is retro hip amusing in a mocking sort of way and is totally acceptable.

Shopping resources:

http://www.sheplers.com/

 http://pinkswesternwear.com/

Local fave, high end:
http://www.weldonswestern.com/

Fashionista:
http://clothing.crowsnesttrading.com/decor/Old%20Gringo%20Boots

Summer Memories #1

As a child I lived, even as I do now, on the very fringe of suburbia. Just a few blocks from my parent's house where I grew up in far north Dallas the houses and shopping centers and paved streets literally ended. Cement roads became asphalt and then gravel; subdivisions opened up to fields of grain and sunflowers and cattle grazing and the occasional creek, way off in the distance. You could tell the creek was there by the trees growing alongside it.

Summer mornings my childhood friend Monica would ride over early on her bicycle- around 8 am. I always knew when she rolled into the driveway because the dogs started barking. That was my cue to go join her.  I suppose her mom booted her out of the house with the admonition to "go play" or something similar; that's how it was when I was a kid, in the '50's, '60's and even in to the '70's. Moms told kids to leave and not come home till dinner. (Who knows what the moms were doing? Mine always seemed to be watching "The Merv Griffin Show" while ironing. Monica used to say her mom sat around the house, smoking, looking like Greta Garbo:"I want to be alone.....") Moms didn't feel guilty about this; they regarded it as the natural way of things. There were no pre-arranged play dates. No baby monitors, moms, dads, or nannies at the playground. No endless schedule of activities, lessons, summer camps or events to attend for self improvement. Summer was just one long glorious expanse of time to be filled, mostly by dawdling. Adventures were self-generated, daydreaming was encouraged. This free expanse of time- unheard of in the modern world of parenting- was seen as a form of self-improvement, all unto itself. It was a time to put away hard shoes and indoor toys and get outside and explore. Parents told their kids to leave the house, "go outside and play" often as early as 5 or 6 years of age. Small children would hang around the alley, playing kick-the-can or hopscotch or running lemonade stands. By the time one was 8 or so, the world opened up; every kid had a bike. You could tell who was anywhere by recognizing their wheels parked nearby. We could and did ride anywhere, as far as our legs pumping in the hot summer sun would take us.

Monica and I had a fairly set routine: we'd ride north and west until the subdivision thinned out, and then for miles out into the countryside along increasingly narrower dusty roads. Our dual purposes were seeing what was out there - developing a mental map of how the roads went and what was there, and hanging around a creek we had found, exploring its many nooks and crannies. The creek had a rope swing someone had tied from a bent old tree that swung out into a pool of water. The water was often stagnant, drying up to a bare trickle by late summer, but in early summer it was flush and cool and lovely. There was also a stable nearby, and we took apples and carrots from home to feed the horses. Somewhere around noontime we'd start heading home, and often stopped by a Dairy Queen we knew about on the way. From an assortment of coins we scavenged from various places (under the driver's seat in the car, the junk drawer in the kitchen, by returning coke bottles to the grocery store) we scraped up enough change to buy a drink or an ice cream. At this point in the day the sun was at its zenith; the blistering heat of a Texas summer made it just miserable to be outdoors anywhere. We'd sit for hours in the DQ just talking, occasionally reading comic books from the 7-11 if we had any. There was a shopping center nearby that had a toy store, and we'd often pop in and re-arrange the shelves - not stealing anything, not buying anything, just tidying up, organizing and straightening the shelves and everything in the store. I know it sounds weird but the store was run by really old ladies who were too feeble to every clean or organize it, and it drove us crazy. ( All those years of our moms forcing us to clean our rooms!) We'd just pop in, straighten up, then leave. It was weird, but a compulsion we couldn't stop.

I often look back on those summers and think about all that unfilled time- what a luxury it was. My life as an adult is so driven by schedule, bells, needing to be in two places at once. Multi-tasking because there isn't enough time to do all the things I need to do. The stress, the craziness of this sort of life. I was talking to a gf yesterday and she made the comment : "This is as good as it gets ! The whole summer stretching out before us, unfilled, all that time ! What will we do with it ? "

The Great American College Adventure # 2

Well, he did it. He did it! I doubted that he'd do it, thought that he would rue it, but in spite of all the odds- he did it. I'm so proud of him I'm about to explode! Son #1, wait-listed at his first choice college, went off for his freshman year in college- wrecked his car the very first week. Inauspicious beginning. His first semester grades were all over the place: A's, B's, C's, a D. He nearly failed a class when he got confused as to when the final exam was. Son #1 came home over the holidays, thin and tired, but full of resolve. He realized he had to take 18 hours in the spring semester, and earn 4 A's and 2 B's in order to have the overall GPA he needed to get in to his first choice university. Son #1 has spent a lifetime doing the least amount of work possible to get by. We 've always known he was creative, but focused and determined in school he was not. However, something lit a fire under him this time. He buckled down, gave up his social life, worked really hard, and pulled it off. I can't believe it, but he did it: 4 A's and 2 B's - yes, still technically the least amount possible to attain his goals  :o) while taking 18 hours, as a freshman. And so he is home for the summer, once again tired and thin, but justifiably proud of himself, and excitedly planning his adventure next fall. Now he continues in a long line of family, generations back, who have attended the University of Texas at Austin. I'm just so proud of him I could dance.

Tis the Season

I came back from visiting a friend in France a few years back and planted lavender in my backyard. Texas is much like Provence in climate and I figured, "why not?" It took the tiny plants a few years to get going, and a harsh El Nino winter in 2010-2011 nearly wiped them out. But my little lavender plants are back this year, and blooming well - a full month ahead of schedule, but hey, global warming is all a myth, right ? I'm about to go out and cut them, so if you want some fresh lavender, come on by !

Yard Sale-Tag Sale-Garage Sale-Estate Sale

Spring is in the air and what a wonderful thing it is on a Saturday morning in the spring, to host or to drive around searching for the quintessentially perfect yard sale. The quest for that perfect find, unappreciated and under-priced by others, but secretly scoring just the item you need to complete your collection, is an exciting adventure that never grows old. It can be an addiction, like gambling. I grew up calling these events garage sales, (my mother always too proud to ever have or shop one), I suppose because that was where people held them back in the day, in our pretentious neighborhood. Too snooty to put it out front- signs posted in yards and on telephone poles directed you down the alley, to the back. When I moved to New York, I kept seeing signs for "tag sales" everywhere I went and had no idea what they were referring to.

Back then, I was too poor to buy anything, anyways. Nowadays, going to a yard sale is quite a fun thing to do. I don't take them seriously, but I know people who do - had one gf who survived her divorce and single-mom status for years, by augmenting her income hosting them on a regular basis. She acquired the merch from a finely tuned trash-picking hobby in her upscale neighborhood. When it was heavy trash pickup day, folk would set out by the curb the most amazing items. She'd drive around in her Volvo station wagon, her kids helping her lug the stuff home. They'd fix it up - replace a wheel that was missing, give it a new coat of paint, and sell at a profit at their weekly yard sale. Some folks would call that owning an antiquing business. Yet this was cash only and no questions asked.

I have another gf who has furnished her entire home, beautifully I might add, from just these sorts of shopping excursions. Every Friday morning during "the season", she scours the local paper for ads, often hitting the events just as the proprietors are setting up (sometimes calling in sick to work! if there is a lot of good stuff, or else arriving just barely in time for work, swinging by sales on her way in) to score the best items before anyone else gets there. I happen to live in a neighborhood that is the creme de la creme for estate states. Lots of elderly college professors, world travelers, art collectors, with excellent tastes and hobbies in music, china collecting, antiquing, books, pottery, art - often with adult children who live far away or don't appreciate their tastes. Primo mid-century modern and Victorian antiques,collectibles of all sorts. Some day, I will be one of these, too.