Alligator boots and a Toboggan Sled

Hemaroids and cowboys boots,....some people say that sooner or later every asshole gets 'em. I decided that since I really wasn’t a cowboy, I should refrain from wearing cowboy gear. In certain parts of Texas, you run the risk of someone snatching you up to rope a stray steer or join a cattle drive to move a herd of longhorns from Fort Worth to Kansas City or ride with a posse to bring a horse thief to swift justice. Being a transplant from the southeast has seemingly made this whole cowboy notion a forbidden fruit of sorts. I struggled deeply with who I really was before I made a choice to purchase a piece of cowboy attire. Funny that such a trival venture could nearly put you on the couch of your favorite psychotherapist to find out whether your subdued Tex Ritter side could overpower and send your rockabilly Elvis roots into the far and remote recesses of your psyche, to remain dormant the rest of your natural life.

It was more than just a pair of boots, though. These looked like they were top of the line, even though they were dusty, aged and worn looking sitting on the shelf in a turn of the century boot repair shop just off the square in downtown Comanche. There they were, a pair of mystical alligator boots, sitting on the shelf with other unclaimed boots which had been repaired but never paid for and picked up. It seems this boot repair shop had been a fixture in this small ranching town, two hours southwest of downtown Fort Worth, for several generations. Handed down from father to son since the mid 1800's, but the latest twist was that in the last of the Van Buren family, there were no sons produced, therefore, in 2000, the new millineum ushered in a new era and a feminine side of boot repair, with Vera Van Buren(she was bold enough in the 70's to tell her husband she intended to keep her original and proud name, and he was not man enough to protest the decision).

Vera saw the look of intrigue in my eye as I perused her shelf of abandoned boots, and she was even perceptive enough to see my pupils dilate when they caught a glance of those cayman narrow toed ropers from the swamps of Louisiana. They looked big enough, but I just didn’t know, my eyes had deceived me before. I didn’t want to get my hopes up that they were 12's(the width variance I could just deal with)and then they disappointingly turn out to be 11.5's. Almost 12, but just a half size off,...enough to cause the most severe discomfort. Now most boots that fit perfectly are somehow always uncomfortable, though most people(men) will lie and tell you they are the most comfortable shoes they own. They are just so head over heels about them because they took out a home equity loan to purchase them! But boots that don’t fit could be easily classified as hell on earth. The purchaser is too proud to admit his mistake(a male problem only, women never wear uncomfortable shoes, they either take them back or they park them and wear every pair but those, ignoring them until they become just like a bad dream)and will never take them back, for fear of having to admit he bought them without trying them on, or worse, tried them on and talked himself out of the pain in order to have the look. In other words their eyes were too big.

Vera was sitting back at her cobbler bench sipping on a bowl of chicken noodle soup, it being lunch time. She wasn’t in the most prone position to see a buying eye, yet growing up in the boot repair business had made her senses so keen that she could pick up on the slightest buyers symptoms, a subtle double take, a brief rubbing of the dry lips(dry from all moisture going to keep up with the over production of saliva triggered by the lust for cowboy boots), tentatively tapping the counter while softly whistling the theme from The Magnificent Seven,...Vera recognized them all and could spot them from great distances. She didn't even need to make eye contact to sense a "buy cue" and start making her sales pitch. Vera would love to be able to unload any pair of those stranded boots just to get her investment of time and leather for the repairs. If she could do that and bump the price up for a little profit, she felt like she had a good business day and would close early to go to the tastee freeze to treat herself to a peanut butter blueberry shake, maybe even buy a round for the house. One of her biggest marketing strategies was to liquidate the leftover repaired boots. Doesn’t sound like much of an aggressive business plan, but she already had a corner on the boot repair market and the added revenue from erasing her bad debt would be enough to buy a new magnetic sign advertising the repair shop to place on her 78 F-150,...another marketing strategy to bring in additional business from the county. Vera was planning on going to the county fair everyday getting there early in the morning to get a good front parking spot near the horse arena. Her magnetic sign would surely get some recognition there. Next year she is contemplating putting an on-site repair shop there, but that would require her to hire an additional employee to watch the shop, at least part time.
I thought I was hiding my interest in the alligator boots, my lust for leather. Vera barked from the back when she saw my lips drying out, "Not a big price for you to walk out with gators on your dogs. All I want’s what I got in em." She took a quick sip of soup, hopped off the stool and strolled toward the wayward boot shelf, picked up the pair I had thought I was not so conspicuously looking at. She looked at the sole, heel, and said the repairs she saw were minor, and should only be about $60,...a small price to pay for alligator, no matter how aged these looked. Then she turned to the inside of the boot. She let out a short grunt and stuck her hand in the boot and pulled out a small piece of paper which seemed to have been stuck to the insole at the heel. Vera looked at the note and said, seems these have been here for a while, came from the panhandle in early 60's seems a Mr. Jim Dean was passing through and dropped them off for repair. He said that he would pay for them now and telephone back to give the address where to forward them. He never called back with the address.

I was excited that the repair had been paid for. It seemed that I would be able to get these for a song, maybe $10 or $20. How much for them, I asked Vera. Then Vera said "Hmm?,...not quite sure, but it seems something else goes with these puppies. She said This is grandad’s handwriting, but I’m not sure if I know what he’s talking about here." Grandad had passed away a few years ago, but Vera never heard him mention this pair of boots or the note inside." She asked me to follow her out back to the barn, I wondered what could possibly be there that would be connected to the boots. We went into the barn and climbed up the ladder to the loft. I had only been in a barn loft one other time in high school under much different circumstances, never to be associated or similar to this trip, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. She went to the back and peaked behind several bales of hay and started to push them over, onto the floor of the loft. Slowly she uncovered a canvas tarp covering a large object. Vera was saying all along that those boots were tied to this object under the canvas. She said that the owner of the boots had not only left his boots for repair, but grandad Van Buren seemed to have agreed to repair something other than boots. Vera finally got to the edge of the tarp and began to uncover this large boxy item. It looked glossy and red, quite a dichotomy compared to the other dull and listless objects in the barn. As she uncovered the hidden treasure, I couldn’t believe my eyes. This part of the country was no place for this gear,.....a tobbagan sled?! What on earth?! What in Texas?! Why in Texas?! Vera said that if I bought the boots that I would have to take the tobaggan sled also, the piece of paper said that I would and grandad had written it, so I guess that was the final word. Grandad had listed that he had repaired one of the runners with some ultra lite, yet durable wood he had shipped from some European country where sledding was more popular. I was ready to take the boots and the sled, when Vera looked inside the cockpit of the sled and found another note and a photo. The note turned out to be a sales slip from LL Bean and was signed James Dean. The photo was a winter shot taken on the set of Giant, filmed in the panhandle. There in glossy black and white was James, Rock and Elizabeth with the sled. We quickly put together that James, the adventurer, had taken them to sled in the Colorado Rockies while on a break from filming Giant. Quickly the price of the boots skyrocketed and Vera, as quickly, saw easy retirement years come into focus. I made her a bid on the boots, but Vera was nice, not nuts. She said that she would make me a deal on another pair of gators she had on the "stepchild" shelf. I chalked the whole afternoon in the shop to a brush with greatness, a story that would last a lifetime. I now had an eternal conversation starter, and a reasonably priced pair of alligators to boot. jgf 2003