New Cowboy Boots: A Conversation
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the need to buy a pair of new cowboy boots. Every Christmas when I was a little girl, we got a new pair of boots. In lucky years, we got the whole nine yards: turquoise jeans, snap shirt, belt, hat, and the boots.
My beloved husband agreed to wedge this shopping trip into an already complicated, whirlwind trip to Jackson. Boots and More, I insisted. Across from the fairgrounds where my Mamo wanted me to train as a barrel racer, no matter that I was actually a competitive tennis player. Life, right?
As I tugged on a pair of boots—I have arches high as the Eiffel Tower; I’m amazed when I can actually get my damn feet in the boots—I told the clerk about our annual Christmas present.
“Oh, yeah,” he said nodding. He was tall and skinny with a greying mustache. “My mama said she might as well have given me just the box. I was still playing with it when I’d already outgrown the boots.” And I could see it, this six foot four inch man, growing like a weed as child.
Then I told him about the ensemble we got to go with the boots. “Same,” he said in the thickest Mississippi accent I’ve heard in a while.
“We had those pop guns in a holster, too.”
“Cap guns,” he said.
“Right! Cap guns. When we got tired of the guns, we would take a brick and pop the caps on the sidewalk.”
“A brick, a rock, anything you had at hand,” he agreed.
“Christmas morning, we would leave that grandmother’s house and go over to our rich grandmother’s house. Over there everyone would be in their velvet. We’d come tromping in wearing our new cowboy clothes. My cousin told me she was so jealous of us, her in her velvet, us in our cowboy finery.”
“All dressed up and nowhere to go,” he mused.
“We had Shetland ponies.” I laughed. “We never rode them, just lay stretched across their backs.”
“Yep,” he said. “Lay down in the field with them.”
We both smiled, remembering our new cowboy boots on Christmas morning.
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Donna Weidner
You just took me back to my childhood Ellen…oh those red paper rolls dotted with caps! The sparks! The smell! Love your new boots 😍
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Yes, the smell! It was the best. All the happiness to you and yours this season.
Emma French Connolly
Impressive boots! Merry Christmas to you and major Tom….
Ellen Morris Prewitt
TY! I’m sure you’ll see them in person. 🙂 And Merry Christmas to you!
Joanne Corey
I love your cowboy boots/clothes stories, Ellen! You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I have never had any cowboy boots or other regalia in my life. I have worn a bit of velvet here and there, though…
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Ah, velvet. So while my cousin was envying us in our cowboy outfits, I was envying her in her velvet. 🙂
Luanne
Haha, I can just imagine this outfit! You must have looked so cute. I had a cowgirl outfit, but it was a Halloween costume that was meant to be the female version of Hopalong Cassidy. And the cap guns. And I have written about pounding those cap strips on the sidewalk–I think it’s in my as of yet unpublished memoir. Are we the same age?
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I thought I was a force to be reckoned with, stomping around in my full regalia 🙂 I think I might be a couple of years older than you? I’m a 1957 baby.