Retirement

To begin a pair of cowboy boots, we start with a pair of lasts that have been fitted to the customer's measurements and toe style. When i started constructing boots, start to finish, without help from my dad, about 15 years ago, dad would still find and fit the lasts for me. I thought that was very cool of him, i could get right to building the boot and not have that anxiety about how they would fit the customer; i figured eventually he would say: here are the customers measurements, go find some lasts and fit them. Later on, i figured he would say: there's the customer, measure his feet and go from there; and he would be around to check my  work.
Of course, it didn't happen that way, or i wouldn't be telling this story. The day before he got on the plane to go live with his other family, he sat me down and explained last fitting to me; took about an hour and a half, then i was on my own. I'd seen him work lasts since i was a kid, i knew what he did, that day i started to learn why. I thought it was an odd way to teach me this task, but now i think that it's not an exact science; some of it is experience and intuition, so actually he did all he could.

The last pair of boots that dad made were in December 2001, he was 81 years old. He didn't make many pair that year, there were many aches and pains, the knee, the shoulder, the neck, the back....Early in 2002 he said he would not make another pair of boots and it was time for him to go live with his other family. Trish and i tried to talk him out of it and he would give us different reasons for wanting to leave; what was odd to me was that he never mentioned the wife that was waiting for him in Matamoros. He waited until September and then left to start his retirement.