The Soul and Soles of a Texas Boot Maker

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/insider/the-soul-and-soles-of-a-texas-boot-maker.html

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HOUSTON — One afternoon a few years ago, Rocky Carroll told me about the time he pulled his gun on those robbers outside his boot shop here.

It was 4:30 a.m. that July morning in 2002. He drove up to the shop with a bag of Shipley Do-Nuts. His assailants pulled a shotgun. He pulled his small .380-caliber pistol from his pocket. Mr. Carroll was that kind of Texas boot maker — the kind who went to work before dawn with a bag of donuts in his hand and a pistol in his pocket.

Shots were exchanged, the robbers struck Mr. Carroll with their vehicle and Mr. Carroll was rushed to the hospital.

“When I was in the hospital, George W. called the hospital,” said Mr. Carroll, referring to George W. Bush, who in 2002 was not only the president of the United States, but also a Rocky Carroll customer.

“The nurse in I.C.U. she says, ‘Some damn joker called and said the president was calling. We hung up on him.’ They called back and said, ‘This is the Air Force One communication officer. Don’t hang up. President Bush wants to talk to Rocky.’ And then Rick Perry called me and said, ‘Throw that .380 away. I’m going to give you a Sig Sauer .45 for Christmas.’ ”

It’s all there for me in that story, Texas writ small: a man named Rocky who survives a boot-shop shoot-out and whose hospitalization warrants a call from the president and a .45 from the governor. Nobody made boots like Mr. Carroll — he handcrafted them for seven presidents and Pope John Paul II — and nobody embodied Texas eccentricity and individualism like Mr. Carroll.

He knew more about the souls and soles of the rich and the powerful than any lobbyist, podiatrist or priest. He flew on Air Force One. He slept in the governor’s mansion. He took calls from Tony Blair and Peyton Manning. Twenty-seven pairs of the boots he made for former President George H.W. Bush are kept at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station.

And yet, through it all, he remained un-elite, crusty and cursing and toothpick-chomping, working in a disheveled Houston shop across the street from a Jiffy Lube. He was a boot maker’s son who made his first pair of boots when he was 6 years old, and he never really stopped, right up to the end. Mr. Carroll died in his boot shop late last month, sitting on the same recliner where, back in 2014, he told me the story about the donuts and the president and the .45 for Christmas. He was 79.

“I think the reason I liked him so much is because he was real,” said Dr. Holly Jones, a Houston rheumatologist and longtime customer and friend. “You don’t have to be this all-pieced-together perfect person. He was a hodgepodge of eclectic, quirky but bright and well-meaning. There was no apology for who he was.”

With Mr. Carroll, the relationship between boot maker and customer was highly unconventional, and uniquely Texan. He gave Dr. Jones and her husband at the time a one-of-a-kind perk that few other boot makers in the world could offer: a tour of Air Force One. After Mr. Carroll was attacked in 2002, she visited him in the hospital. And there was the time her husband was serving in the military in Iraq and had a problem on base. He told her to call anyone she could as high up on the scale as possible.

“So I called Rocky,” Dr. Jones said. “The next thing I know, he calls back and is cackling and he’s going, ‘Is Joint Chiefs of Staff high enough for you?’ Coincidence or not, the issue was fixed. Promptly.”

Throughout Texas in recent days, Mr. Carroll’s customers have been telling Rocky Carroll stories, and wearing custom-made Rocky Carroll boots, including Representative Ted Poe, the Texas congressman who had performed Mr. Carroll’s wedding in 2003 to Judge Denise Collins (the bride wore a pair of white boots made by the groom).

Bill King, a former columnist for the Houston Chronicle who ran for mayor of Houston in 2015, pulled out his $2,500 pair of Rocky-made alligator-skin boots — and the .44 Magnum he used to shoot that particular gator. “It just kind of became very fashionable and very iconic to have a pair of Rocky Carroll boots,” Mr. King said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick noted that although Mr. Carroll was known for his elaborate designs, his process was unusually simple. “I recall when I bought mine years ago, he had me put my foot on a metal folding chair, drew a line around my foot and measured my ankle,” Mr. Patrick said in a statement. “That was it. The rest was magic.”

Upon learning of Mr. Carroll’s death, Jerry Patterson, the former Texas land commissioner, expressed his regrets. “I’ve been saving a hide from a gator I killed for Rocky to make boots,” he said. “Guess I waited too long. Shame.”

The day in 2014 when I visited Mr. Carroll’s shop, one of the first things Mr. Carroll did was put Chuck Norris on mute. He had been watching an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

RJ’s Boot Company was located in a wooden building that was covered in old campaign posters. The boots on the shelves had folders of paperwork stuffed inside, awaiting pick-up from customers, but the boots were the last things I noticed. There were heads of deer and other taxidermied creatures on the walls. The horns of a Texas Longhorn were mounted over a set of swinging saloon doors. There were canisters of polish and fly swatters and electrical equipment. When one of my colleagues at The New York Times visited Mr. Carroll in May 2001, he reported finding a “quarter-inch of dust” clinging to the ceiling fan. I didn’t have a tape measure with me, but it seemed to have grown to a full inch by 2014.

Mr. Carroll — a short, bearded man whose appearance and personality was more pirate than cowboy — sat in the middle of this bric-a-brac in his recliner, chatting with a worker he called Shaggy. He talked about gold inlay and presidential boot-skins (Italian calf for Reagan; eel for Bush Sr.) and then he mentioned his other career.

Mr. Carroll was a lawman with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for more than three decades. He worked narcotics, vice and the helicopter squad, and for a time was making boots in his shop during the day while fighting crime at night. It was all rather hard to believe.

So Mr. Carroll pulled out his wallet. He showed me his old badge. It read “Detective.” I stayed there a long time, listening to Detective Carroll, the boot maker.