The Unmuddled Mathematician

Look at the Boots on that Dude

By Chris Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician

My dad was raised as a kid during the depression.  The real one.  Nothing was wasted, discarded, or replaced when only partly worn out.  It affected the way he lived his entire life and as near as I can tell it affected the behavior of every person who got through it.  Being frugal, repairing things, doing without frills were the family habits with which I was raised.  Let’s be fair.  Kids like me who were raised after WW II grew up with what a depression kid would only describe as opulence.  I mean, I had a new pair of Levis, a new pair of Converse All Stars, and a couple of new T-Shirts every summer.  It was not a strain on family finances.

However good things were becoming in America in the 50’s and later, my dad never got comfortable buying anything for himself that wasn’t absolutely needed.  He would get things for others but not for himself.  But that doesn’t mean he didn’t dream.  In that era dreams were not seen on TV as that was just in its infancy.  Radio didn’t have any pictures.  All of us got our first glimpse of the new things we absolutely had to have through catalogs.  I should note the big exception, namely cigarettes, which were advertised everywhere and always.  They were represented on TV and billboards as cool, necessary, healthy, in fact just about essential for life.  But for the rest of the stuff we had catalogs.  Big ones, like Sears, J C Penney, and Herters.  Most of you have never heard of Herters, and the software with which I wrote this red flagged the letters as a non-word.  But ask us old timers and we will all smile as we bore you with our time buried in the Herters catalog.  I mean, where else can you find such fine reading and pictures of a guy holding a duck decoy which he is pounding on a fence post to convince you of the indestructibility of the decoy.

Back to the story.  My dad just wouldn’t buy stuff for himself.  In my entire life I heard him utter a personal desire for only two things that were not really essential.  One was a 12 gauge Winchester Modell 21 shotgun, a double barrel firearm with quality like the famous English shotguns used in driven grouse hunts.  It had two sets of barrels, one for skeet and one for ducks/geese.  We pretty much had used Winchester Model 12, pump action, which were just fine but in the minor leagues compared to the 21.  When I was about 16 my dad had a chance to buy a used Model 21 from a friend.  The whole family worked on him (we were avid hunters) for about a year before he finally bought it, used it for 10 years, and sold it for a lot more than he had paid.  Even so, I think he felt guilty about the whole deal.  The depression effect was very long lasting.

The other item on his bucket list was way different and strange.   In a catalog someplace he had seen an ad for a special pair of boots.  They were made by a company called Gokey and the name of the style was “Botte Sauvage”.  These were high boots, at least 16 inches, had no laces and were meant to be pulled on with some effort.  Go ahead, look them up on Google.  My dad was not a hiker, hunted waterfowl wearing hip boots or waders, and had no need for this item.  But he wanted a pair.  On this issue he did not get the constant urging of the family to buy them (they were expensive), not because we didn’t want him to have them but none of us saw any way they could be used.  Once in a while dad would pull out a catalog and point to a picture of the late herpetologist Raymond L. Ditmars (look him up), with his testimonial that these boots were completely snake proof.  The picture showed a snake bouncing off the boots as it tried to bite.  Somehow dad was hooked.

He didn’t buy the boots while I lived at home.  But when my brother and I grew up, got jobs and had families and moved away he used that catalog and the boots occupied a special place in his closet.  Unused. 

The conclusion of this story was related to me by a contemporary of my dad, so this is second hand.  It was verified by me in later conversations with dad.  There was a group of about 5 close friends who continued to hunt sage hens in Wyoming in early September (the same guys with whom he hunted ducks).  On one trip my dad finally unboxed the Gokeys and set out to use them hunting sage chickens.  He was proud of those boots, although they were stiff and difficult to get on and off.  On the first morning of the hunt things went pretty well, both with the hunting and the boots.  At lunchtime the group drove the short distance to Farson, Wyoming.  This is not a metropolis.  They all walked into a bar/restaurant (the only one in Farson), dimly lit.  Back in the corner was a small table of regulars, real cowboys and ranchers, worn and dirty clothes, but experienced veterans of the country. 

One of the cowboys glanced at the newly arrived visitors and scanned my dad in particular.  His eyes got wide and in a voice audible to all in the room said these words, “Look at the boots on that dude”. 

The rest is history.  Besides his own feelings about the boots my dad knew that his group of close friends would tell and retell this story as long as they lived.  I never saw the boots on my dad but did see them once, many years later, in his closet.  They were never worn again after the fashion show in Farson.   I wonder where they are now?