Walk a mile in their boots ... and know the person

Published: Sunday, September 21, 2008 12:14 AM MDT
News-Record story by Peter Gartrell news@gillettenewsrecord.net

Several pairs of boots and a single pair of loafers line a wall in Paul Drew's bedroom. Drew also has a collection of dust-covered boots that he just can't part with in his closet.

It's been said time and again that to really know a person, you have to walk a mile in their shoes.

In Wyoming, it would be boots.

There's something very personal about boots - their fit, their look, their height, their touch, the little imperfections that make them uniquely our own.

People love their boots, they care for their boots, they know their boots. Quite simply, once you get to know someone's boots, you get to know them.

The scratch has a story. The stitching weaves a tale. The stain has a reason and the new heels cover up memories long since passed.

"This has been a lifetime of boots," said Johnna Ferguson.

Her 8- and 10-year-old sons, Denton and Chase, walked out of Corral West with sneakers in their hands and new Ropers on their feet. Three of the four boots fit neatly under the boys' jeans, but a fourth had a pant leg stuffed awkwardly inside, something only an 8-year-old could do without noticing.

It was just once in lifetime of boots. And their stories.

A love affair with boots

Most kids in the 1950s asked Santa for baseball cards, toy trains, dolls, bikes or hoola hoops.

Not Paul Drew.

Growing up in Cheyenne, his big present was a new pair of boots. Even now, nearing 60, the white-mustached oil and gas attorney gets excited when he talks about his favorite footwear.

The shark skin Tony Lamas that Drew's parents gave him in junior high got the same care his Luccheses do nearly 40 years later.

"My Luccheses are goat skin, so they shine up real nice," he said proudly, sitting in his Gillette Avenue office.

Drew will go on "polishing sprees," where he cleans his dozen or so boots all at once. The rest of the time they sit, lining the wall alongside his bed or clumped in the closet. Even the old pairs rarely get thrown away. He just can't bring himself to do it.

"Why would you ever throw away a pair of boots?" he asks, his rough, smoky voice cracking quizzically. "I guess I'm kind of a collector."

He loves boots, how they look, how they feel. Drew also likes the extra lift boots give him. He gets all his suits cut for them and even bought himself a pair for his daughter's wedding a few years back.

"I think after years and years and years of wearing boots, you get used to the elevated heel. A pair of Oxfords just don't feel right."

Drew knows.

He owns loafers that are covered in dust. He can't remember the last time he wore them.

What they wear at home

The Thrushes have "go-to-town" boots for the 50-mile drive south on Highway 59 to Gillette, but those aren't the ones that see life on the ranch just shy of the Montana border. Those are their work boots, their home boots, the ones they wear on trips to Biddle and Broadus, Mont. They're the ones caked with manure from 12-year-old Amy's chores - feeding bottles to the bum calf Anabella, tending to the goats, pairing out cows from one pasture to the next.

J.W.'s have different shades, the left slightly darker than the right thanks to blood pouring from castrated calves. The 14-year-old's left foot is firmly lodged by the hindquarters of each bull-come-steer and each red squirt makes the boot darker still.

Inside, his father, Sterling, sits at the kitchen table, blue jeans held up by brown leather suspenders draped over the shoulders and strapped across the chest of his blue cotton shirt. From under the hems of his pants, laces of U-shaped boots peak out, before criss-crossing up his shins. Dirt and mud seals memories of fence post-digging and roping practice on the worn tanned leather.

His wife, Jodi, stands nearby, stirring butter and cheese and potatoes in a metal bowl. She stands on Ropers that will be worn until they fall apart, nodding as Sterling says Gillette has lost touch with its ranching roots. The city's gotten too big with too many out-of-towners - just one reason you won't see the Thrush's home boots, their Montana boots, their work boots, in Gillette.

They'll wear their Ostrich-skin Naconas, polished and shined, or J.W.'s new reddish-brown Ariats that were just bought for graduation. "It's just a matter of pride to dress up a little," Sterling said. It's not something they have to worry about that in Biddle or Broadus. The ranchers there still understand.

Going door-to-door

The old adage of burning shoe leather to win elections has a variation in Wyoming - boot leather.

"A good pair of boots is like an old friend," said Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a boot-wearing Wyomingite even in his days studying economics at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Freudenthal also campaigned in his boots.

"I walked my way through my cowboy boots and ended up in Casper," the Thermopolis native recalled of a mid-campaign snafu that developed going door-to-door in his 2002 campaign against oilman Eli Bebout. He had favored Luccheses on his feet as a private attorney and federal prosecutor. Without a steady income, the Rolls Royce of boots cost too much. He went to Lou Talbert's, the famous Western store, and looked for a bargain.

"I explained to them that I was just a poor Democrat running for office" - before settling on some Ariats for $160. The two-term governor now owns two pairs and swears by them, raving about their supportive shank, heels tall enough to ride a horse and, in his words, "just a little bit of tread."

"It's a good walking boot," he surmised on a trip to Gillette. Walking may not be all they're good for, though, as an Ariat-wearing Freudenthal trounced Republican Ray Hunkins in 2006 with 69 percent of the vote - it was 17 points better than 2002.

Moving up in the world

The scuffs are progress for Marie Parfett. She doesn't have to worry anymore about keeping her boots clean or polished so they look out-of-the-box new months or years after they actually were that way.

The first pair was different. The 49-year-old didn't get new boots until she was 24, six years into motherhood and following nearly a quarter-century of hand-me-downs. She was the youngest of five siblings in a ranching family outside Dickinson, N.D., where money was tight and everything she wore as a baby, child and teenager was used, passed from one brother or sister to the next.

On the cusp of 18's independence, she got pregnant, married, and found herself worrying about how to make ends meet for their young family on a ranch hand's pittance and the annual side of beef. There was not time to think about buying the new boots she'd always wanted, so she kept getting hand-me-downs, not just from family now, but friends, too.

Then, at 24, she got a job at Lyle's Western Wear. She sold boots for a living and now, with a steady salary and merchandise discounts, Parfett bought a pair of cream-colored Tony Lamas with reddish-brown wingtips, babying them for three years until they ended up in the trash.

"Owning your first new pair of cowboy boots is an experience you never do forget because they actually fit," Parfett said with a big grin.

"You wanted them to last because you knew it would be a while before you got another pair."

She never wore used boots again, climbing the ladder from clerk to supervisor to store manager at different Western-wear stores in North Dakota and, for the last few years, Gillette. As more boots collect in her closet and more money lines her pockets, she's let the meticulous boot care slip a bit.

"I always say take care of your boots," the Farmer's Co-op clothing department supervisor said. "I should practice what I preach."

She just doesn't have to anymore.

Empty, but not forgotten

The empty cowboy boots are one more reminder for Jo Ann Shober to keep praying for her son. When Ira's gone, the black and tan Tony Lamas with a rainbow of stitches stand sentry by the kitchen door, a monument to good omens in the red-and-white ranch house east of Savageton.

"I'm keeping them by the door until he comes home from the Army," Jo Ann said in March, snow spitting as she slipped on rubber galoshes to check heifers and calves in the corral.

"Every time I walk by them I say, 'thank you Lord, he's coming home from Iraq.'"

Two months later, Ira, an artillery specialist in the First Infantry Division, had made it home in time for branding. A mother's prayers had been answered, though he wasn't home for long. He headed off again this summer - first for Fort Riley, Kan., then on to Germany. Ira expects he'll eventually end up back in Iraq, where he spent 14 months patrolling between Baghdad's airport and the Green Zone.

All the while, his size 9's were in the small vestibule, exactly where they'll stay until 2012 - he just re-enlisted with eyes on sergeant's stripes and his feet in Army issues. Each time she passes them, Jo Ann will pray.