Lost Boots
I’m headed to Texas tomorrow—Austin, to be exact—and I can’t find my cowboy boots. They’re nothing special. I bought ’em in Louisiana in ’04… I think in Shreveport. I also bought a can of Copenhagen that day. But they’re lost in the garage now. I dug through some old boxes looking for ’em. If I asked my old man about their whereabouts, I’d get the same response I’ve gotten since grade school: “Well, they didn’t get up and walk away on their own.”
They’re not too comfortable, but they’re tough as nails. I’ve never cleaned ’em, except for a spit here and there when too much Georgia clay got on ’em.
I wore ’em to a Willie Nelson show on one of my first dates with my wife. They made me 6’3” to her 5’3”. I’d seen Willie a time or two as an undergrad in Athens, but I probably wore tennis shoes to those shows—and beat-up blue jeans with a Patagonia belt from high school and a flannel. I remember drinking Willie’s whiskey before the show. The bartender gave me a promotional guitar pick that came with the bottle.
When I was digging through the boxes, I found three or four dozen books I’d forgotten about. Since I’ll be alone in Texas, I figured I’d better bring something to read, so I grabbed Complete Poems of Robert Frost. I got it from one of those little libraries that people have in their front yards. The day I got it, I was feeling blue. Lonely as hell, living in beat-up old houses in Boston.
My days were spent playing court tennis at my racquet club in Back Bay, drinking Canadian beer by the case, and driving through New England listening to classical music on AM radio. Weekends were on the Cape playing golf, watching sailboats in Connecticut, and nursing hangovers.
I also found three old copies of The Hemingway Review (I’m a card-carrying member of the Hemingway Society): Spring ’21, Fall ’21, and Spring ’22. I’ve thumbed through ’em but never got around to reading ’em… lucky me… they’ll come in handy in Texas. I also found my copy of Ernest Hemingway & Gary Cooper in Idaho. I bought it in Sun Valley on my cross-country road trip during the winter of 2019.
I’d like to wear my boots to Texas. I’d like to not be traveling alone. I’d like a lot of things that I’m not gonna get.
