Buckaroo Booted At The Office

I bought a pair of 17" genuine Olathe buckaroo boots when a buddy and his partner took me to Kleinschmidts Western Wear in Higginsville, Missouri, this past July. I had gone to Kansas City for a business trip. This Western Store, right off of I-70, is quite a ways away from the city, but a nice drive. The boots have a blue shaft, black foot, pull holes, fake mule ears, a 2-1/2" (6.3cm) riding heel and a smooth all-leather sole. They are fully leather lined, so they keep my feet and legs warm, especially on cold days.

When you get a pair of real cowboy boots like this, you want to wear 'em! And I have, around the neighborhood with jeans inside and the beautiful tall blue shafts showing. I have even put a pair of spurs on them, riding on the spur ridge as designed. The boots make quite a visible presence, and a firm, masculine, clunk when I walk in them. They are fairly comfortable when worn with thick socks. Their only downfall has been that the left boot had a nylon stitching thread come loose while I was wearing them the first day, and it caused a small bleeding sore. I melted the offending thread with a flame from a lighter, and all was well again.

Since I work in an office where "business casual" is the norm, I can't really wear boots showing the shafts there. But I wear cowboy boots to work all the time, so these boots, worn with pants over, looked like any other boots on my feet. I enjoyed wearing them to work yesterday.

The only comment anyone made was as I entered a conference room for a meeting. A colleague said, "Oh, he's coming" as I was walking down the hallway. When I entered the room, my colleague said, "I heard you coming ... nice boots." I guess that's my signature -- boot clunking down the tile floors.

A guy on the Metro on my way home kept staring at my boots. The train was crowded at first, but as the crowds thinned, he moved to the seat across from me. He then asked, "what kind of boots are they? How tall? Where can I get a pair?" He was impressed, and said that he always wanted a pair of boots like that, but wasn't sure he could wear them to work.

I asked him if he liked his black wingtip dress shoes. He said, "no, but that's what everyone else wears at my office." I asked if there were a dress code requiring a certain kind of footwear to be worn at his office. He said, "no..." and I could see the wheels turning in his mind. I told him not to be concerned about following the pack, and be his own man. I enjoyed a nice conversation with a young man who just may become another Olathe Buckaroo cowboy boot-wearing office worker in Washington, DC.