What I Learned From My Cowboy Boots

What I Learned From My Cowboy Boots

My cowboy boots are too tight. The cowboy who sold them to me in the boot store said they would loosen up after while. I believed him. After all he looked like a cowboy. He spoke with authority. He was young and cute. 

So I believed him. I am glad God looks out for me because I think I would be terminally naïve if it wasn’t for Him. He gave me “horse sense,” after all. 

My cowboy boots are beautiful. I have wanted them since I was 13. Since I got Silver. I had beautiful boots once but they were stolen at the Clarion Co. fair because I left them out instead of putting them in my mother's car. (naïve of me, huh?)

Fifteen years ago when we were in New Mexico I wanted boots, but I had no opportunity to buy them. Then, this year, I got to visit the kids in Lubbock Texas. I thought, “I’m getting the boots.”  The Bank of Roger authorized my purchase.

We took Wonderful Jen and Dave with me to the store. I counted on Jen to tell me why I shouldn’t buy the boots. She is much more sensible than I am and has taught me a lot about buying things. So I trusted her.

But I waited forty years to own boots. 

 Now I faced a decision. Good boots are costly. How much would I wear them? Did I need to spend $XXX on boots or would $XXX do? Finally I found some on sale. Now I own cowboy boots.

I wanted to sleep in them, to put them under my pillow that night. I did take them out of the box and kiss them on the way home.  Jen, in the front seat, thought i gave Roger a kiss to thank him. First things first.

They are too tight. Right now, but I know I could “ride ‘em and rope ‘em” if I only owned a rope and a buckskin Quarter Horse. And if my boots loosen up a little. So I can actually walk.

What I Learned --Grand Canyon 3

What I Learned Traveling to the Grand Canyon 3

I miss my bed. 

I sleep in a bed every night. In what I call a Roger hotel.  He finds them under his price point and they have to have a free breakfast. I want them with a pool. So we pull into a town and crusie around and pick a motel.  

Then comes the crucial test. How does it smell?  I have no idea if smell has anything to do with cleanliness. But in my head it does. We’ve had a couple non-smoking rooms that had a whiff of smoke in them. Like maybe they cleaned the wall paper instead of removing when the room went from smoking to non-smoking.

We had one room that smelled like old ladies. We opened the door and window and turned on the air conditioner to air it out.   

I tell myself that I will only be there one night and I pray for God to protect me (from bedbugs, etc.) and I go to sleep. 

BUT 

I miss my bed. I miss the Leslee-shaped groove I sleep in, and wake in, and walk around in everyday.

New is getting old.  

Then I think, “Wait a minute! You’re driving all over the southwest in a convertible! With one of your favorite people! He doesn’t grumble about the tenth bathroom stop. He’ll make latte stops and he doesn’t even drink coffee!”

Then I get in the convertible and off we go. I think, “The fresh air blows off the old lady smell. The Grand Canyon is coming up. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 13.”  

And the next night when we find a Roger motel, I just grin. There’ll be hot water for a shower and maybe even a nice pool. 

What I Learned--Grand canyon 2

What I Learned Traveling to the Grand Canyon #2

I learned that I am so much an easterner. 

We drove along this little twisting road through a state park in Utah. It was beautiful country with huge rock formations and blue, blue sky. 

Roger slowed as we rounded one more snaky corner.  We came upon an accident in the opposite lane. People were around the car that had gone off the road and run into the rock wall just off the road’s shoulder. We drove on because others had stopped. We decided to call 911. 

Only there was no cell phone reception.

We drove 12 miles before we came to the first place we could call for help. It was a ranger station at a camp ground. We called 911 from there.  Nobody had called the accident in yet. 

If the accident had been on interstate 80 or 81 the roads I know and we had waited 12 miles to call it in, the police would have already been on the scene. 

I had no idea how different one part of the USA was from another. 

We talked to a young man who took care of his sick grandfather and moved to a different town so his grandpa could get to a hospital if he needed to go there. There was is no hospital in Silverton, Colorado. And the road can get snowed closed in the winter.   

He couldn’t just go to the urgent care walk-in, or the grocery store.

We heard a pastor talk about an accident where a couple guys in pickup trucks had first aid equipment and flares to help out.

  

I really admire the scenery out here.  And the people? They are pretty amazing.

Just like at home.