COWBOY BOOTS

My first pair of cowboy boots didn't come along until a couple of years after I got Sherman.

When you're 14 years old and paying for buying, feeding, & stabling (a fenced-in patch of Los Angeles dirt, in this case) 800 lbs. of equine flesh by washing cars and making signs ... then things like riding clothes are put on the back burner.

(Also seeing "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" repeatedly - yeah, like eating pizza every night for two months can be considered 'repeatedly').

I rode in old jeans, a tank top and sneakers. I rode bareback for quite a while because I couldn't afford a saddle (and I thought it was much cooler, anyway). A group of us would buy a 60 lb. of carrots together and split it because it was cheaper.

But when I did get cowboy boots, they were worn every single day... for years. When I switched to English riding, those type of boots eventually showed up. But I never got ride of my cowboy boots.

Until about eleven years ago.

By that time, my cowboy boots were literally unwearable, for a couple of reasons - MAJOR holes around where your little toe join the rest of your foot (don't ask me why they wore out there more - I have no idea) - holes in the soles of both boots - and my feet had grown one entire size during the six years I lived in Honolulu (one of the extremely few disadvantages to wearing slippers - flip-flops to you haoles out there).

And I do not know why I didn't get another pair - I mean, heck, I live in Arizona, where we have Cowboy Poet Gatherings (I kid you not, look up the link), and wearing cowboy boots and turquoise neckties is as common as, well, as the gangs of people we natives refer to dismissively as "snowbirds" come from places like Wisconsin and walk around in December in shorts and sandals.

I decided to spoil myself - walked in our (one and only) mall's western-clothing store, and bought a pair of cowboy boots.

And now I am wondering why I waited so long, and what other sheer delights I have left behind?!

Besides Paul Newman, I mean.