The last time I watched Wheel of Fortune, Vanna was still turning letters not tappin' tv screens, but I tuned in Saturday night...and they were givin' away 2 pairs of RJ's Boot Company custom boots! Someone picked 'em up off the wheel, but they didn't get to keep 'em. Doesn't matter what kind of a heel they've got...Rocky Carrol's boots have a "high profile".

I'm already putting soles on my second pair...can ya believe it?

Brian Thomas came by the shop. Brian is an Okmulgee graduate who worked for Tex back about 15 years ago (and is one of my e-mail pals). Right now, he's making boots off and on while he's finishing up an Air Force career. Brian brought in some of the first boots he made in Tex's shop. They were a comfort...some of his early stitches wandered off just like mine did. It hard to remain optimistic when all the stitches in the shop to compare yours to are Tex's...he stitches even rows, with the machine going full blast...and just using two fingers on his left hand. The three of us ate lunch together, and I spent my afternoon inseaming and listening to the two of them talk. Brian's taking my "invention" back with him for someone he knows in Wichita Falls...(Tex and I haven't come up with a name for it yet) I found it in the automotive aisle at WalMart....basically it's a piece of door trim, you know the kind that keeps you from banging up the edge of your door in parking lots. I stick a small piece of it on the back of the lip knife blade. It's got "ultra grip" don'tcha know...a little bit of adhesive on the inside, so it doesn't slide around (but you can still take it off for sharpening). Anyway, it seems to help keep the back of the knife from cutting into my hand...at least for now until I get some more hand strength....or maybe until I get callouses.

Today I learned that good "chicken fry" (as in steak) is all about the gravy, and that swamp coolers' floaters just don't last like they oughta.

Symmetry is overrated.

I think we'll get this second pair on the lasts today.

I've been eating BBQ...lots and lots of BBQ. Last night, Tex and Margaret Robin took me out to a place about 12 miles outside of Coleman...towards San Angelo. I think the town is called Valera...it's small...really small. No more than 100 people live there."Downtown" is about two buildings long, with one more across the street...that's the good one, Big O's BBQ. Save room for pie! I even got a tour of the "pit" out back...what a lot-o-meat. Big O says he fills it up at least every other day. Ribs are on Fridays only.

Today, I finished sewing the designs on the tops of my second pair...black and white inlay...the butterflies are caught in a windstorm (which accounts for their erratic flight pattern). Tex is gonna to cut the toe foxing out for me. This is probably a good idea...sometimes there is a trade-off between learning opportunities and ongoing morale. I'm gonna be staring at those toes a lot. Good stitching and cutting with that Singer 31-15 is gonna take some more practice. There is a direction to the one-row stitching...Tex says it'll be automatic someday. Right now I stare at it hard....curves towards the inside, start stiching from the bottom when the butterfliy is on the left...start from the top when the butterfly is on the right. Keep the roller-foot to the left of where you're headed. I have to figure it out every time.

I'm stitchin' around butterfly inlays today....hopefully not ALL day.

When I got back to my cabin last night, Mrs. Bourland had made me some tea. She likes to fix green tea, because it's higher in folic acid. I plopped in a few ice cubes, and drank it straight from the jar. There is a billboard sign as you're leaving Coleman on South 206...YOU ARE LEAVING THE FRIENDLIEST TOWN IN TEXAS...Come Back Soon! I haven't been able to find a single example to prove 'em wrong. Everybody's been friendly...The Robins, Tex's customers, Mrs. Bourland and her son, the gals at the Dairy Queen, the fella at the post office (even though he did tease me a bit), and Emmett "Poppa" Payne at the BBQ stand a few blocks away, the one that's open on Sundays. I was taking a walk down a quiet street in Coleman, a car passed me, drove on for what musta been a 1/4 mile...then it turned around, the folks drove back and asked me if I needed any help. This town is friendly alright.

I got an e-mail from my dad yesterday asking me if I was wearing my boots or keeping them as samples. The boots fit great, I love 'em & I'm wearing 'em. I even had a heart-stopping run-in with a outa-control gas pump in Abilene. In my hurry to shut off the gas that was gushing down the side of my rental car, I wasn't paying attention to my new boots!...got a big ol' spot on 'em , right on top, right by the wrinkle. The spot went away, but it was good practice...I'm gonna bang up those box toes, it's just a matter of time.

One thing I've learned is how good just one or two rows of stitching can look on a boot. Tex said I should look at old catalogue stitch patterns and those of other bootmakers for ideas. Not to copy them, but to see how they balance and fill the space on the boot. I always wondered why there were so many points and angles in stitch patterns, why not curves and swirls? Tex showed me that the stitch length changes as you swirl around and around. Most bootmkers prefer the uniformity you get with ending at a point.

I must be serious about boots. It's Sunday, and I'm in the bootshop working on my second pair, while Kitty Wells is giving her last Texas appearance...at the Elks Lodge in Brownwood. I'm a little worried about time. This pair should go faster, but they're fancier...foxing on the toe...a couple of butterflies inlayed. I know Tex won't let me go home with a half finished pair of boots, but the more he has to jump in and speed me along the less experience I'm gettin'. It sure would have been handy to have had a previous career in shoe repair, so I would know how to work all these machines. Shoot!..forget the knives...what's scary is takin' an almost finished boot and walkin' up to that belt sander. yikes.

Today a thunderstorm rolled through Coleman... I could hear those big raindrops jumpin' off the top of that air conditioner stickin' out through my window.

This "weblog" thing really works...right now I'm in the Abilene Public Library. It's swell, all the air conditioning, scratch paper and stumpy yellow pencils a gal could want. I went to visit James Leddy this morning...7am, what was I thinkin'?! He's got a beautiful place...lots of boots to look at, and lots of good stories to go with 'em. He fessed up that today is his and his bride Paula's 45th wedding anniversary. Once I found that out...I finished up my picture takin' and scurried out of there, so they could get to celebrating. I found some breakfast down the road. My sweetie back home taught me to look at the parking lots...crowded is good. This one on the corner of Ambler Ave. and Clinton St. looked just like a used truck dealership...I had a plate of chorizo and eggs. (Yum.) Now, I'm gonna walk around downtown Abilene, maybe hit the Goodwill...then head back to Coleman. It's supposed to be hot today.

Here they are...these are the boots I made! You'll notice the toe style is a bit different from a traditional "Tex Robin Boot".

No boots today...tomorrow. The heels aren't done. Today went a little slower than Tex expected. My battle with the lip knife continues.

Today was a long day. We put the soles on my boots...flattened a BIG ol' nail for the shank, pegged the bottoms, all that stuff. I had kinda of a "wreck" with the 5 in 1 (that's a machine with a rolling blade)...a slight undercut did in that right sole pretty good (it will be reincarnated as a stacked heel I think). All these tools I've never used before, some invented by Tex Robin or sometimes his father. I think somebody counted wrong...seems like right about now, there have got to be more than 374 steps to bootmaking. I might get to wear my boots home tomorrow.

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.

Last night was the first night I took any ibuprofen. My right arm didn't hurt that much, but I've lost track of which of the 374 steps of bootmaking I've done now, and which ones I've still got left to do. I've crimped the vamps, and jabbed some stitching holes through the insole with an awl, but I figured I might need my arm again today. I'm terrible with that lip knife...ARGH!...Tex says I should try whittling boots out of wood 'til the knife feels right. The knife is sharp enough...I'm just using it wrong. I've never really used knives before. I think something in my girl-brain says pulling a knife through stiff leather straight towards your thumb is a bad idea. Tex showed me the right way to hold the knife is towards the crease of your hand, so if it slips it goes along side your thumb. (I'll practice.) Tex says you can't ever know where folks will get hung up learning bootmaking...my guess is that he thinks if I'm serious I'll spend the next 20 or 40 years figuring it all out anyway, just like every other bootmaker. Tex says I did just fine channelling the insole with that short knife ...go figure?

So far so good. I've already stitched the tops and crimped the vamps. Tex and I made a daring move and went with a contrasting thread color...that yellow shows up really well on that dark brown...don't try this at home. Well, I did okay on that one row of stitching twirling around the front. It's lining up 2 rows of stitchin' right next to each other at the top, up at the beading, that I have some trouble with.

Coleman, TX trivia:
In the 1985 Greater Abilene Telephone Directory, there are 34 pages with the heading "oil"...and nine with "air conditioning".

Growing up, I was always the little girl with a stomach ache on the first day of school....actually I think I had a stomach ache all the way through college. I'm not sure why...probably because I worry myself too much about being good at things I have no experience at. Yesterday was my first day at Tex's place...and I was sitting at the sewing machine with a piece of brown leather with some wacky angles and curves...and I was sewing around and around and around...and I was wondering where the stomach ache was. It seemed like it would be a good place for one...you know, a kinda moment-o-truth-thing... Will Jennifer June like bootmaking???? Yesterday, Tex and I picked some brown leather and some yellow thread out of the pile. He showed me how to measure and cut out some patterns. I practiced stitching rows....and I measured Mrs. Robins' feet. (She's had her feet measured quite a lot.)

Here I am. I've made it as far as Millsap. I've eaten BBQ and ridden a horse...and I haven't even been in Texas 24 hours yet. I'm soakin' up some of Stephanie Ferguson's hospitality. Her daughter gave up her room to me last night...full of beanie babies...horsey stuff...the walls are covered with posters and horse show ribbons...everything on the walls except a mirror...it's just the right girl age to be.

I leave tomorrow...

I'm packin'...payin' bills...doin' laundry...I leave tomorrow. Tex Robin told me to bring along a pair of boots that need new soles. My pee wees are in bad shape, but they've all got plastic soles. Instead of wooden pegs, they've got rolled paper kinda like lollipop sticks. I think I'll bring along my snakeskin boots. Lee Miller gave me a couple of second hand skiving knives...they fit my hand a lot better than the new one I bought. Tex said I don't need to bring any tools...but I think I'll pack these along.

I'm gonna be in "reel trouble" if I don't remember to return my "Urban Cowboy" video before I leave for Texas. I stayed up way too late the other night watching it. I'm intrigued a bit with all this 20th anniversary stuff...like the upcoming Broadway musical... "Swayze inked for film role lead: 'Urban Cowboy' rides anew in N.Y", or articles like Urban Cowboy or Urban Legend: The Myth of the Cowboy Image.

I am a week away from Coleman. People are giving me "advice" (like this).... and tellin' me it's hot in Texas in July. Right now it's 91 degrees in Coleman. I'm cold almost year round, here in Northern California. Texas is about the only place where my fingers and toes aren't cold. My blood moves around much better in Texas.