Today, I’m stitchin’ the welt.

Tex says…”You gotta start somewhere”. Jennifer June says, “Remember…you’re makin’ a pair-o-boots, that means you’ve almost always got at least one more try at gettin’ something right…and other times you’ve got 3!

I had one of those deja-vu-thangs…while I was stitching my pull tabs. Something about what Tex was tellin’ me…somethin’ about the glare of the sewing machine light on the leather…somethin’ about how I was folding up the leather in my hand to get my stitch down the top far enough…….weird.

I had this weekend off from bootmaking…I went driving off to nearby Comanche…and let Tex Robin get some real work done. I went to visit with Eddie and Kathy Kimmel. They own Kimmel Boots and put on the Boot and Saddlemakers’ Round-Up. I see them every September at the Round-Up, but they’re always to busy to do much more than smile at folks. Their shop is open by-appointment-only on Saturdays…so it was quiet. I’ve mostly visited one-man or one-woman shops. It was fun to see a slightly bigger operation. (Someday I’ll post up the pictures I took.) I’ve been to quite a few boot shops now…most of them, naturally, have a lot of the same equipment. This time my eyes went straight to the middle shop…Eddie’s invented a few things o make the shop run smoother, like a nail dispenser which turns and lets a few folks get at it at once…the sew-on welts are neatly spooled on top…very cool.

I’ve been staying at the Harbord Motel run by Mrs. Ileta Bourland. Four little brick tourist cabins…the best deal in town, just $24 a night. It’s what you call “off season” here in Coleman. The cashiers at the Walmart said it was 107 degrees. Sure, you could wait to come to Coleman..the town will fill up with deer hunters in a few months, when the weather cools down a bit…but then you would miss the peaches on Mrs. Bourland’s tree. Mrs. Bourland has been awful nice to me. She’s been bringing me ice, and peaches, and turning on my air conditioning before I come home from the boot shop. This weekend she shared some of her homemade peach cobbler…yummmmmmm.