Redneck Crime

Recently, a twenty-something young man in sneakers moseyed into Trail Town Custom Leather in St. Jo, Texas, and asked the price for repairing a pair of boots. “My grandfather left me a pair of elephant boots, but the dogs chewed the tops,” he told apprentice bootmaker John Glaze and asked how much it would cost to repair them. Then a solicitor called. Glaze listened to the caller’s spiel for a while before noticing that his customer was leaving. Realizing the guy was carrying his tennis shoes, Glaze got suspicious, walked to the front window and saw that he had on a pair of $10,000 boots. “By the time I made it to the door, he was already going around the corner. And by the time I got to the corner, he was in his white pickup truck driving toward Forestburg,” Glaze said.

The boots, with handtooled leather tops depicting a cattle drive and bucking broncos, were the most expensive pair in the shop. Created by Glaze’s boss Carl Chappell, they had won first place at the 2003 Boot & Saddle Makers Trade Show Round Up in Wichita Falls.

Reward posters posted alongside U.S. Hwy. 82, around the town square and on the Internet offer a $1,000 reward, stating, “Anyone wanting to turn this piece of trash in should contact the Saint Jo PD.” Glaze hopes the reward will motivate one of the thief’s “scumbag friends” to turn him in. (Dallas Morning News, 8/12)

Nothing says ‘Texan’ like a fine pair of cowboy boots and a Stetson. Here’s hoping that varmint ends up with toe blisters and trips over those fancy high heels to fall on his sorry butt while dancin’ the Cotton Eyed Joe. –Tex