ROADSIDE REST

They May Not Be the Boots That Won the West, but No Real Cowboy Would Ride Without 'Em

One $5 gold piece. And two "shin plasters" scraps of paper money together worth 25 cents. These comprised the total monetary resources of 20-yearold H.J. "Joe" Justin. He had left his home in Lafayette, Indiana, to lighten the burden of his father, a hardworking tobacconist who simply could not roll and peddle cigars fast enough to feed his large family. Joe Justin had ridden the train to Texas in 1879. Joe worked a spell as an apprentice cobbler in Gainesville in north Texas. Then bundling his hammer and awl and all his worldly possessions under his arm, he traded his $5 gold piece for a wagon ride to Spanish Fort. Through tiny Spanish Fort ran the Great Eastern fork of the Chisholm Trail, where it crossed the Red River into Indian country. These were the years when the Chisholm carried a flood of surplus cattle from Texas to the northern rail towns of Abilene, Caldwell, Wichita, and Ellsworth. Joe borrowed $35, acquired a stock of leather, hung up his bootmaker's shingle, and began to turn out a style of footwear that catered to the vanities and needs of the trailhand: tall narrow heels, square or rounded toes, exaggerated arch and high tops reinforced with stitches. The design filled the bill for specialists needful of a foot covering to shrug off brush and brambles, to resist scuffing against granite, to dig in for a tug-of-war with a dogie, to kick together a campfire, to bear a brace of abrasive spurs, to act as a blunt ax on firewood, and to serve as a hammer for pounding fence staples. Joe Justin is generally credited with originating and popularizing a self-measuring system for the mail-order trade. His pattern made it possible for any cowhand to measure his own feet and legs at the ball, instep, heel, ankle, and calf, and post the data in a pre-addressed envelope. Rivals prospered. They did make, as today, quality cowboy boots. But when Ramon F. Adams penned his Western Words, A Dictionary of the Range, his favor fell on: JUSTINS Any cowman knows this word is synonymous with good cowboy boots. A few men have left their names to enrich permanently the vocabulary of the Westerner through the excellence and popularity of a necessary product. Among these are Colt, Stetson, Levi, and Justin. Easterners know by now what these names represent. From Justin's bootworks shuffle about 3 million pairs a year. People from all walks of life buy boots, including a faithful following of truckers, oil field operators, rodeo fans, and rhinestone cowpunchers. Then there are the politicians. Boris Yeltsin of Russia wears a pair, a gift from former President George Bush, whose closet holds 25 pairs. President Bill Clinton wore one of his five pairs of cowboy boots at his first inthe mail-order trade. His pattern made it possible for any cowhand to measure his own feet and legs at the ball, instep, heel, ankle, and calf, and post the data in a pre-addressed envelope. Rivals prospered. They did make, as today, quality cowboy boots. But when Ramon F. Adams penned his Western Words, A Dictionary of the Range, his favor fell on: JUSTINS Any cowman knows this word is synonymous with good cowboy boots. A few men have left their names to enrich permanently the vocabulary of the Westerner through the excellence and popularity of a necessary product. Among these are Colt, Stetson, Levi, and Justin. Easterners know by now what these names represent. From Justin's bootworks shuffle about 3 million pairs a year. People from all walks of life buy boots, including a faithful following of truckers, oil field operators, rodeo fans, and rhinestone cowpunchers. Then there are the politicians. Boris Yeltsin of Russia wears a pair, a gift from former President George Bush, whose closet holds 25 pairs. President Bill Clinton wore one of his five pairs of auguration. Comfortable, he said. That's the dominant word these days on both sides of the fitting stool. Bootseller Kare Lockhart of Phoenix says a good fit trumps style every time: "Buyers take a lot of time walking around to make sure it feels good.... It almost has to feel as comfortable as a sneaker." All but trampled to dust is an old controversy over the shape of the classic high-heeled cowboy boot. Don Rickey Jr., in his book $10 Horse, $40 Saddle, bluntly states, "Extra long heels were stylish."

Backing him up is Forster Harris in The Look of the Old West: "Don't let them kid you about the reason for the heels, either. So your foot wouldn't 'slide through the stirrup'? Or, 'To dig in in the ground for leverage, to hold a wild one' after you'd roped him? Maybe. But the Army in flat shoes, the Indians in moccasins, and the gauchos in South America all managed, right along with the gents on stilts, when it came to handling the rough ones. "The truth is, those cowboy heels were and are a mark of position, an insignia, like a colonel's eagles or a policeman's badge. When you have a good pair on, they shove you up into another world altogether. They're wings to the spirit, those cowboy boots and who doesn't want wings?" Which leaves unexplained (perhaps unexplainable) the popularity of the cowboy boot as women's wear. As a sexy symbol, the booted cowgirl became a rage in the 1950s, and persists today when Elizabeth Taylor gladly pays $40,000 for her gold-stitched boots bearing eight carats of diamonds. Dolly Parton heard about that and placed an identical order.