Cowboy Boots

I liked the music at last night's concert. I love the atmosphere down in the Square on Thursday nights. And it was fun watching Chloe Lowery jumping all over the stage, doing her impression of Janis Joplin. But the best part of the evening, for me, was definitely the boots.

I'd bet anything that Chloe's Janis-style boots were Lucchese, which I personally covet. Lucchese is the premier Western bootmaker, around since the early 1880s. First made for cowboys and cavalrymen, they were eventually the choice of movie stars and moguls. John Wayne wore them. Gregory Peck wore them. They now come in every kind of leather you can think of, and some you'd never think of--buffalo, ostrich, elephant, kangaroo, alligator, crocodile, sting ray, horn back caiman, goat, and, of course, calf.

Or maybe they're Justin boots. Bootmaker H. R. "Daddy Joe" Justin invented the cowboy boot in Spanish Fort, Texas, in 1878, putting his head together with a cowboy customer whose name is lost to history. When he died in Nocona, Texas, in 1918, his daughter Enid, who had been helping him stitch boots since her childhood, continued the family business as Nocona Boot Company. Her brothers split with her in 1925, moving all the equipment to Fort Worth and founding the Justin Boot Company. In 1981, the two companies merged again. Nocona made boots for the likes of Gene Autry and the Lone Ranger--and of course all those cowboys.

One conflict I have with cowboy boots is that I don't like to buy leather. I try not to support any industry that relies on killing animals. I get around that by buying things used, out of the economic cycle. Waste not, want not.

So maybe the Lucchese boots I want are out there on ebay, or sitting in the Salvation Army or on a table at the Brimfield market. I can wait.