Cowboy Boots

I live in NM. Many of my friends wear cowboy boots. I never have. Here is the story why:

Mother took me with her everywhere when I was little, unless she was working, and sometimes even then. She let me ride in the huge front seat of the ‘58 Ford with auto transmission she bought with money she earned tutoring dyslexic kids and substitute teaching. That was back in the day when the government let people make their own mistakes and the insurance companies be damned. There weren’t any factory-installed seatbelts and child-seats hadn’t even been dreamed of yet.

One summer day, Mother left my brother and sister with my grandmother, then she and I set out for the huge Farmer’s Market on Finley Avenue in west Birmingham.

I loved that place. That was big time adventure for me at that age, five or six. I loved watching people, asking questions, seeing new stuff.

I was Little Joe Cartwright in my head as we drove past endless miles of steel mills. I had my cowboy hat. I had my six-shooters and even a canteen. I was ready and we were headed to Injun Country.

The only thing I was missing was a pair of cowboy boots. Mother would never buy me any, no matter how much I begged. I watched every western on tv and at the movies when I could talk somebody in to taking me. I pestered her constantly to buy me a pair to match my six-shooters and hat.

She always said no.

Why?

Because she said so.

I was a persistent brat, though.

I watched a thunderstorm brewing up ahead, then I asked her for the hundredth time at least, “Hey, Mom, can I get some cowboy boots if I save my allowance and buy them myself?”

She sighed, tapped her fingers on the Bakelite steering wheel for a minute, then she simply said, “No.”

Drat!

We drove on, me with my arms crossed on my chest and a big-time pout on my face, her watching the storm roll in with some concern now wrinkling her brow.

It started raining before we hit Finlay Avenue. Within seconds came a downpour the likes of which I’d never seen before. A real frog-choker, Pop would’ve called it.

Finlay Avenue was lined by ditches through which side streets had to pass. We were on one such side street in a black neighborhood. By the time we hit the ditch, it was filled to overflowing. Mother tried to go through it, but the car stalled, and there we sat, watching the torrent swirl around and past us while rain still fell by the bucketful.

“What we gonna do now, Momma?” I asked her, too clueless to be concerned. I splashed my sneakers in the slowly-rising water and laughed.

I laughed a lot as a kid.

She let out a big sigh and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel again, something she did a lot when she was thinking.

“I guess I’m gonna get wet,” she said, sounding resigned to it. “You’re gonna stay here and guard the car from Injuns, okay, Buddy?”

Darn tootin’ I would!

“I can do that,” I said, serious as a heart attack. Instantly, I was squinting, trying to see through rapidly fogging windows.

The rain eased up about half a minute later. Mother bowed her head and mumbled a quick prayer.

“Wish me luck,” she said, “I’m going to find a phone and call your Pop,” then she was out the door, her 110 lb. body severely buffeted by churning water and any debris it carried. Her thin summer dress was instantly soaked, clinging like plastic wrap. She grabbed a hold on the back door handle, then slowly worked her way to the back of the car. Once she was out of the ditch, she limped toward the nearest house. She looked back at me once, waved and smiled. I wiped away a clear place on the window with my bare arm and waved back.

The house my mother went to was an old row house, not much better than Oliver’s. Dingy, peeling paint. Saggy roof. Crooked stove pipe. An outhouse. Tiny, narrow, fenceless lot.

Mother used a dilapidated handrail to help herself hobble up the stairs to the porch, then she knocked on the torn screen door’s crooked aluminum frame. Two seconds later, she disappeared inside. Maybe five minutes after that, but what seemed like an hour to me, she came back out accompanied by a tall, skinny, grizzled old black man with a ragged umbrella. He escorted her all the way back to the car and made sure she got in safely, then he gave her a smile and a nod before he turned and walked back to his house with what I think of today as a stoic dignity.

Mother rolled down her window.

“Bye Mr. Johns,” she yelled. “Thank you so much!”

He gave a brief wave in response without looking back.

I decided I liked him because it was obvious she did.

And almost everybody loved my momma. She treated everybody with respect until they pissed her off.

Mother shook her head like a dog, flinging water, then she hugged herself as she started shivering. “I called your Pop,” she said meanwhile. “He was in bed, but he said he’d call Mr. McKinney, or somebody, to come help us out. Shouldn’t be more than thirty minutes, or so, Buddy.”

I liked it when she called me that.

“Okay,” I replied, but I wasn’t sure how long that actually was.

“What do you want to do until somebody gets here? Play a game? Hear a story?”

“I want to hear a story.”

“What story do you want to hear?”

I eyed her shrewdly. “The one about why I can’t have cowboy boots.”

She rolled her eyes, but I could hear the gears grinding in her head, like on a cartoon. She was stuck with me for thirty minutes at least. There was no way I’d just let it drop without a why. I’ve just always been like that.

Nana said it was because the devil was in me.

She was probably right.

Mother finally shook her head and let out a lengthy sigh. She could be a drama queen sometimes.

“If I tell you, will you promise to never tell another soul, not even your dad?”

“Why not?”

She glared at me. Those topaz eyes could cut you deep.

“Look, do you want to know why or not?”

I just nodded and kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t stupid and I really did want to know, you know?

Her eyes searched mine for a second, then she started talking.

“Senior year in high school, there’s this dance in the spring called prom, which is short for promenade.”

“Ew,” I said wrinkling my nose. Dancing was stupid.

“Just be quiet and listen,” she said in her I’m-being-patient voice. “If you interrupt, I might not start back up, okay?”

I made the lock your lips sign, then threw away the key.

She smiled briefly, then continued, “It’s supposed to be for couples, so a boy has to ask a girl to go with him, or a girl has to ask a boy. You see?”

Yeah, okay. I got it. Yuck.

She glanced at me and I nodded again.

“Good,” she said, relaxing a little, then she went on with her story:

“So… this prom… I’d never been asked by a boy to go anywhere. I waited until the last week, hoping I wouldn’t have to go with your Pop because nobody would ask me.”

She moved the rear view mirror until she could see herself, then she tried to fix her hair, her nose wrinkling the whole time.

“I talked it over with my friends… you know… Ms. Mary, Ms. Ruth and Ms. Annette. There weren’t many boys left.

Mary said I was gonna have to ask one of those remaining boys myself, take the ball in my own hands, so to speak, but I was really, really nervous. That was easy for her to say. She’d already been dating Billy for two years. He was three years older than us and he already had his own little house in Sylvan Springs. Annette said the only one left that didn’t smell bad was Dudley Gilmore, so that’s who I decided to ask. You know the Gilmore house. It’s that big old place on Warrior River Road down past the ‘Y’. I’ve showed it to you a few times.”

She’d finished with her hair and was putting on fresh lipstick. She seemed to be waiting on an answer, so I said, “I remember. It’s white with a green roof.”

Mother nodded as she kissed a Kleenex and stuck it back in her gigantic purse.

“I worked up the nerve to ask him three days before prom. Mother and I had already made me a dress. It was beautiful. It was burnt sienna in color, with dark ivory lace. She said it was a good color on me.”

She put away her lipstick, re-adjusted the mirror, then said, “I was sure Dudley would say no, but he didn’t. He said yes.”

She turned her head and looked me squarely in the eye. “I thought I was gonna pee myself.”

I knew exactly what that felt like, so I laughed.

Mother’s teeth were chattering, now, as she hugged herself again. She was always cold.

“He came to pick me up in his daddy’s old Model T pickup truck. He got there early, so he had to sit on the porch with your Pop, which was probably painful, while Mother helped me with my shoes; dark ivory flats. The smaller pair had just come the day before and the left shoe from it was a little loose, so she made a bandage for my heel to take up the extra space.”

Reflexively, I looked at her feet. She always had to buy two pairs of shoes and she never wore heels like other women.

Whenever it was just the two of us, Mother told me a lot of stuff I really didn’t want to know. Most of it was about her personal life before she met my dad.

She was frowning at the ceiling now, her eyes half-closed.

That made me nervous.

“I had made up my mind about something you won’t understand, but I’m gonna tell it anyway. It’s the main point of the story.”

I just shrugged and said, “Okay.” I really wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

She laughed a little. “You’re the only one I can tell, anybody else would just judge me negatively.”

Hmmmm… Something told me I might be squirming during this next part.

She glanced at me, gave me a wicked grin, then she started:

“I know you don’t know what this means, but I was supposed to start Auburn in the fall. I had been to Dr. Shannon. You remember him, right?”

My right hand went to my right knee without me even thinking about it. It still hurt.

“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “He put the cast on my leg when I stepped in that hole and broke my knee.”

She nodded, then continued, “He was doing surgery on my legs right after graduation, so I could heal and recover some before I started Auburn. I’d be stuck at home all summer, mostly in the house, so my only chances to get experience with boys before college would have to come in the next six weeks.”

She took a short breather as another downpour roared around us. With the windows all fogged, it was like I was in a cocoon. I was digging it.

After a minute, she glanced at me twice, gnawing on her bottom lip.

“I thought Dudley was my only shot to learn anything,” she finally went on. “I didn’t talk to anybody but Mary about it because she was the only one of us who’d actually, you know, done anything with a boy.”

She was wrong. I didn’t know. I had no clue what she was talking about, but I listened anyway. I was pretty content for the moment right where I was. I liked the connection we had at times like these, though I couldn’t have put words to it then.

“I told Mary I wanted to go as far as I could go that night. We put together a plan. Billy would get a case of beer, then the four of us would go back to Billy’s little house after the dance. We’d drink some beer, have a little fun, then Mary and Billy would go to bed and leave me alone with Dudley.

I told her to leave me a condom on the nightstand.”

I wasn’t squirming, yet, but I had a feeling it was coming.

“Mother got my shoe fitted and I went to the mirror. I thought I looked prettier than I had ever looked. I tried to stand up straight, but when I looked down, it was so obvious that my left leg was eight inches shorter than my right I cried.

That took another fifteen minutes to fix.

Poor Dudley. Pop was a man’s man and Dudley was a little wimpy.

When I came out on the porch, Dudley and Daddy both stood. I would swear I saw tears in your Pop’s eyes for a second, but I was probably just wishing.

Dudley had a big smile on his face, but he was wearing a too-small hand-me-down suit and a checkered bow tie… and he had on cowboy boots. I didn’t know what was worse, going to prom with Dudley, or going with your Pop in his coveralls, but we’d made a plan and I was determined to stick with it.”

I wished she’d just get to the point so we could move on to something else.

Anything else.

“Anyway, Dudley pinned a white camellia corsage his Momma had made on my chest with some un-helpful hints from your Pop, then we left.

Prom was at the gym, so it wasn’t but a three minute ride and we got there right on time despite my tearful delay.

I couldn’t dance, really, back then, not like I can, now. That seemed to be fine with Dudley, so we just stayed at our table and watched and visited with our friends until Mary and Billy said they were going home early, about ten. I told Dudley we were going with them and he said okay, so we left and followed them to Billy’s little house in Sylvan Springs.”

She stopped for a second then. Almost immediately, a knock came at my window. I looked at Mother and she nodded at the window lever. I opened it. There was a smiling young B’ham police officer standing there waist deep in churning water.

I liked cops.

Back then.

“Howdy pardner,” he said, then he bent down so he could lean in the window and see Mother. “You okay, ma’am? Can I call you a tow truck?”

She smiled and said, “No, but thanks. I called my daddy about fifteen minutes ago and somebody should be here soon to help us out of this mess.”

“I’ll just stay here in my car, then. This ain’t the best neighborhood.”

Mother’s jawed clenched a little at that, but she still gave him a sweet smile and said, “Thank you ever so much, officer. That would make us feel so much safer,” but she rolled her eyes at me.

Like I said before, Mother wasn’t afraid of much but snakes and having a child die before she did, the same two things she’s still afraid of today as she moves into a nursing home.

The officer slogged his way out of the ditch and I rolled up the window. A light drizzle still fell from heavy, leaden skies.

“So where was I?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” she answered herself before I could. “We were going back to Mary and Billy’s. Well, when we got there, we decided to play bridge while we drank a few beers. Me and Mary against Dudley and Billy. We beat the pants off ‘em, just like we always beat Billy and your dad.

Afterward, Mary and Billy excused themselves and went to Billy’s bedroom.

That just left me and Dudley. I grabbed his hand and we moved to the couch.”

She frowned and gnawed on a fingernail for a second. “I had to make the first move. Dudley was either uninterested or clueless or both, so I kissed him. His eyes opened wide for a second and he didn’t respond, but then he did and things moved along like they’re supposed to.

We made out for a while, then I took Dudley’s hand, led him to the bedroom. I got on the bed, but he said he had to pee and went to the bathroom.

I took off my dress but had trouble with my slip and bra. I finally got them off and was sliding off my panties when Dudley walked in. He was tall and skinny and very white… and very naked, though his hands were over his crotch. He stared at my little boobies for a second and I stared at the cowboy boots he’d put back on for some reason.

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.

Dudley turned red and ran out.

Before I could put my clothes back on, I heard the truck start up and drive away. That was the end of my senior prom date. I guess it was okay. I got some kissing practice, but I was also a little disappointed.”

She looked me in the eye. “Are you ashamed of your Momma, now, Buddy?”

I wasn’t sure what any of what she said meant, but I knew what I was supposed to say back. I said, “No Momma,” and solemnly shook my head.

She searched my eyes for a second, then she nodded.

“I didn’t see Dudley again for about a dozen years, at his mother’s funeral. I dodged him until after the service. He walked straight over to me and there was no way I could avoid him, but at least he was smiling. He put his arms around me and said, ‘Thank you.’

He let me go and I looked at him kinda funny and I said, ‘For what?’

‘For making me realize I’m a homosexual,’ he said, then he smiled and walked away.

I just stood there for a minute with my mouth hanging open, thinking, ‘Great. The first time a guy saw me naked it turned him queer.’”

Mr. McKinney showed up soon after, pulled us out of the ditch and got us going. We went on to the Farmer’s Market. Something like that would never deter her. I don’t remember that part of the expedition, but I’m sure I had a blast.

Dudley became a teacher, like Mother. I don’t know where he taught. Homewood, maybe. I cut his grass two summers in high school. He and his lover lived on Kenilworth.

I got paid five dollars for cutting the grass.

Mother warned me to never go in Dudley’s house.

I never did.

The world was different back then, but not as much as people think. Some things never change.

I never asked Mother for a pair of boots again.

In fact, I’ve never worn cowboy boots to this very day and I live in New Mexico. For all I know, it was those damn boots that made Dudley queer. I’ve known a lot of men who wore them over the years and I ain’t taking no chances!

Reviews

[Jean Lagace]

As someone else said, nice dialogues. What a strange story to tell a six year old kid. Both the heroine and her beau must have been no more than 16 or 17 when this happens. In the early thirties, when the attitude toward sex wasn't what it is today. Well, I am not a prude but even today, I would find a teenage girl acting this way a bit too much. Being young and no homo in the middle sixties, I sure never experienced nothing of the sort. This being said. I read it till the end because I like the kid more than I did the mother. lol Well done.

[Lea Sheryn]

Very interesting story. I enjoyed the end.

[SweetNutmeg]

What a story! You are really good with dialogue,something I deeply appreciate. I think, for an adult, you kept an amazing handle on what life is like from a child's point of view. I really enjoyed this fun story.

[Tinker Pete]

Thank you! I'll post some more 'Mom' stories. She got polio in the summer of 1936. She was 5. Her left leg never grew like the right one.
In a weird twist of fate, I suffered a bad fall and now I limp just like she did.
Mother was the kind of person who tied herself to her favorite tree to keep the power company from cutting it down.
So far, she has escaped from the nursing home three times. Stay tuned...