Time to put my boots out to pasture

It is time. I can't avoid it anymore. They are threadbare and the leather is cracking. The soles are shot again and after I wear them, my toes hurt. So I have to retire my cowboy boots.

Some guys wear fancy dress shoes. I wear cowboy boots. Suits, slacks, blue jeans. whatever. I do not own a pair of loafers or wingtips. Instead I have black cowboy boots. And I have worn them for a long time.

I can't even guess how many times these boots have been re-soled. Over the years I am sure that we have spent more on sole repair than we spent on the boots brand new. But I just like them soooooo much.

Besides that, these boots and I have been through a lot of good times together. I bought them to wear when The Boss Lady and I got married a dozen years ago. All that talk about it being the bride's special day was almost overshadowed, because with my black double breasted suit, these boots and I looked GOOD!

A side note, I should have looked good that day. Somewhere along the way we got off track with our wedding spending. we ended up spending more on my suit and boots than on the bride's dress. The suit quit fitting me about 40 pounds ago, and the wedding dress just hangs in the back of the closet. But the boots have stuck with me all these years.

I am not 100% certain, but I bet I was wearing them when we signed the papers to buy our first house. Since we bought in May, I might have been wearing shorts that day. And I usually don't wear the cowboy boots with shorts. That's what my brown boots are for...

I do know that I have worn them at the hospital when each of the children was born. Of course, I wore the same shirt both times, too. And you might not think that black cowboy boots and a shirt plastered with Sugar Daddy candy wrapper logos would match up, but it is a good look for me.

This will most likely be the first year in 13 that I haven't worn my black boots to our Thanksgiving family reunion. That, my friends, is a lot of turkey and dressing lunches, chicken stew dinners and Cowboys football in between.

So after payday, I guess I'll be headed to the cowboy boot store. And maybe another pair of black boots will be coming home to stay for a while, But these old boots are going to stay up on the closet shelf. Because someday the Sugar Daddy shirt, these old boots and I might have to head back to the hospital again.

Or maybe I'll just wear them to Thanksgiving dinner one last time.