I'll Talk, Won't Take the Walk

For lack of a better blog topic, Sam and I are going to talk about boots – as in “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” (remember Nancy Sinatra?).

Boots were the topic of today’s Blondie comic strip. Dagwood seems to be the only person in the strip to be unaware, as his daughter informs him that, “Everybody’s into boots this year, daddy”

“They’re red hot this year Dear!” Blondie chimes in.

Well, Sam and I don’t know about you, but we don’t plan on joining the boots bandwagon anytime soon. I mean, have you seen the little booties in pet stores made for dogs? OMG. Even though Sam is really good about letting me put a rain coat on him when we go out in bad weather, I just don’t see him cooperating with me if I want to put boots on him. How foo-foo is that! What is he a danged poodle or something? NO! On the other hand, I have to admit that I sure wish his feet would stay dry when I take him out in bad weather, ‘cause he soaks up water like a sponge. Every time, and I do mean every time, I take him out and it’s wet, I have to towel his feet off before I bring him back in the house. He’s so cooperative, lifting his little paws up to be wiped. I can’t help but love the stuffing out of him for that, although he seems just to prefer a treat for his cooperation.

I realize this boot thing is a fashion statement and will pass. And of course, it’s winter, so why wouldn’t you wear boots? Some boots are pretty stylin’ – those long, over the calf leather ones are even hot looking. But some boots, and one that seems to particularly to have caught on this year – like the suede-looking ones with lambs’ wool or whatever sticking out of the tops of them - make the wearers look like lazy sloths; especially if the wearer is dressed in pants that look like flannel pajamas. I cannot believe people actually wear such an outfit out in public, but they do.

I don’t know if the Australian outback look is better than the Doc Marten look. At least the shearling boots (or whatever they call them) don’t have waffle-stomper soles for kicking homeless people to death. That’s a good thing.

I know a lot of people swear by cowboy boots, especially those custom, handmade jobbies you travel to places like Texas or Wyoming (you know, out west) and pay hundreds of dollars to buy. I yearned to wear cowboy boots once in my youth. I worked part time around the horse race tracks in California (Bay Meadows closed and Golden Gate Fields) for a while. Most everyone else there wore cowboy boots and swore they were the most comfortable things they could possibly put on their feet other than slippers.

So, one day I bought a pair of cowboy boots and wore them to the race track. I walked around in those boots for nearly 10 hours. At the end of the day my feet felt like the track farrier had nailed horseshoes onto my soles. I was so crippled up I almost couldn’t walk. Of course, some bozo exercise rider explained that the cause of my problem was because I hadn’t purchased custom-made boots.

I really wish I could walk around bare foot like I did when I was a kid. But if I go barefoot now, the bottoms of my feet would feel like I was wearing cowboy boots again. These days I think one of the best uses for boots is when the local firefighters use them to collect donations of money for charity. Sorry Nancy.