Man Gets A Kick From Bootmaking
Nancy Sinatra was wrong. These boots aren’t made for walkin’. They’re made for admirin’.
They’re kangaroo and kid skin with a map of Idaho painstakingly inlaid on the front and back of the calf section. Cheery syringa flowers hug the base. A white pine stands sentinel along one seam; a bluebird along the other.
“I’ll never get to wear them,” Gail Resser says wistfully. Her finger slides across the boot’s soft leather to the white mark that represents Mount Borah, Idaho’s highest peak.
Her husband Dave grins. The pair of boots he spent 65 hours crafting just arrived back at his G Bar D shop in St. Maries after three months in the University of Wyoming’s art gallery. In another few months, they’re going to the Sangre de Cristo Art Center in Pueblo, N.M.
“The more intricate, the more fun,” he says, peering at his artistry through 19th-century spectacles.
This mountain of a man never dreamed he’d be a giant in the cowboy-boot world. But, he hurt his back in a logging accident in 1989 and needed a new career. He was 46. Options were limited.
A friend suggested bootmaking. Dave wore cowboy boots and dabbled in leather work, but had never considered such an occupation. Within months, he was in bootmaking school.
Now, leather is Dave’s world. His cigar-sized fingers trim it paper thin. He works five, six, seven layers of designs into a leather mosaic that’s as flat as a bookmark.
He stitches curls that rival his handlebar mustache and butterflies to match those on the first boots he ever wore 50 years ago. He’ll do whatever the customer wants - even Idaho, complete with rivers, lakes and mountains for a cool $950 a pair.
The art galleries called after Dave’s boots hit Hollywood - in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Tombstone,” “The Indian in the Cupboard.”
The University of Wyoming wanted Dave to demonstrate his technique. But, he declined. He had orders to fill.
“I never thought I’d get this much attention from across the United States,” he says, genuinely surprised. “I just like working with my hands, creating.”
Northern exposure
If you want fall in full splendor, head north from Sandpoint, says Bonners Ferry’s Tracy Mosgrove.
“The scenery this time of year is enough to make a person become religious,” she says.
And while you’re in the neighborhood, stop in Bonners Ferry. Tracy says her town has the best cream-filled doughnuts in Idaho and a bookstore to outdo all others. Sounds good to me.
Unwanted intruder
My call for chilling tales reminded Rathdrum’s Bonnie Kester of a night when she was 21 and living alone in a triplex built in the 1940s. An intruder turned her blood cold that night.
Before bed, she had put out her garbage, which meant leaving her permanently-locked door ajar while she walked to the cans 20 feet away.
Secure in her locked apartment a few minutes later, Bonnie climbed into bed and was drifting off to sleep when a heavy movement just behind her shocked her awake.
“My heart was pounding so hard, it seemed that was all I could hear,” Bonnie says. But the sound in her room drowned out her heart. It was purring.
Apparently, a neighbor’s cat had slipped into her room while she emptied the trash.
“I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see that cat,” Bonnie says.
Snuff ‘em out
The clerk at Coeur d’Alene’s Zip Stop sent a customer out the door last week when he couldn’t show proof he was old enough to buy cigarettes. I had to smile while I paid for my gas.
What great things have you seen out there? Report them to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo