SEPTEMBER 2019 55
they don’t have the broken-in feel that is inherent
in new, custom-made Western boots. Boots must
be functional too, and Rios and Camargo have
built pairs for all needs, from knee-high boots
for protection against rattlesnake bites to low-
cut ropers made to glide over a dance floor. Per-
haps most importantly, boots must look good.
Customers have many different options when it
comes to the kind of leathers used, the shape and size of the
toes and heels, fine points like piping and pull-straps, and the
designs to appear on the shafts. It is the bootmaker’s job to turn
a customer’s concept into reality. Rios and Camargo have ex-
ceeded expectations for decades.
Operating in the Valley, they don’t receive as much attention
as bootmakers in, say, Dallas or Austin. But they’re just as good
as, if not better than, the very best in the big cities.
Earlier in the morning, I drove past what is billed by Guin-
ness World Records as the World’s Largest Cowboy Boots
Sculpture, located outside San Antonio’s North Star Mall.
These 35-feet-high and 33-feet-long renderings
of what Merle Haggard called “manly footwear”
in his song “Okie from Muskogee” are indeed gi-
gantic. (Of course, women make up a big por-
tion of a bootmaker’s clientele, too.) Sculpted
by my artist friend Bob “Daddy-O” Wade, they
have been a San Antonio landmark for nearly
four decades.
It occurred to me that Daddy-O’s mammoth boots could be
emblematic of the position cowboy boots have held in my life.
One of the oldest photos of yours truly shows me at age 4 wear-
ing jeans and boots. I later flunked shoe-tying in kindergarten
because I never wore shoes with laces. My father was a rodeo
cowboy. My mother was a rodeo girl. I have a birthright to cow-
boy boots and I’ve indulged it all my life, though it’s only been in
recent years that I could afford custom-made boots—and I ha-
ven’t wasted any time collecting. I counted 15 pairs in my closet
before I set off for South Texas, but I’ve never had any built by a
custom bootmaker in the Valley.Clockwise from left:
Armando Duarte Rios with
the boot his uncle designed for
King Ranch cowboys; Armando’s
Boot Co. in Raymondville;
train tracks on the outskirts of
Raymondville.