Carrying this series forward, I am posting about a discovery of three pairs of boots that my partner found in our attic, which had been stored there since we moved to our house in 1998, and long forgotten.

Man, I did not remember that my very first pair of Wesco boots were not “Boss” (engineer) or harness boots, but were a very tall pair of Highliners. Back in the day…

…I was doing a lot of construction and landscaping. Being an emerging Bootman, I remember receiving a printed catalog from the West Coast Shoe Company (Wesco) in the 1980s. I saw a pair of what I thought were really cool-looking tall lace-up work boots, and sent away for them by mail order. (For anyone under the age of 30, this was an old fashioned system of finding something you wanted in a printed catalog, filling out an order form, placing it with a check in an envelope, licking and affixing a stamp, and putting it in a mailbox. Just so’s ya know, us old farts had a much more difficult time finding things we wanted that were not available in a local store. We had to mail away for them since Al Gore hadn’t yet invented the Interweb machine hereonwhich you find this blog and so many on-line purchasing opportunties.)

I digress once more.

These boots are 20 inches (51cm) tall, and lace up to the top. They are rugged as a rock, and fit as tightly as you want them to fit, since they are adjustable with lacing. (More photos of these boots are here on my website.)

Man, I hate lacing tall boots. I am impatient, and it seems to take forever.

Once laced, these boots look great, and conform to the legs well. The boots have a Vibram 430 (“minilug”) sole, and a steel side plate on the right and left boot. The side plate protects the boot when a linesman climbs a pole when doing his work.

I found out more about these boots through a posting on the Boots On Line Board. Unfortunately, one of the replies that I received began with reciting information that the guy was brainwashed with, “if your partner gay yes, a neatnic high IQ &stickler to detail, all trates of gay males…”. You can tell that, regretfully, the writer is rather uneducated by his inability to spell or write correctly. I wonder, is there a link between lack of education and believing stereotypes about “gays”? Hmmmm… intriguing fodder for a future blog post sometime.

Nonetheless, I plan to clean up these boots and put them on eBay. I’m not interested in keeping them. They are unsuitable to wear when I ride my motorcycle. I can’t wear them to work (since I work in an office) and they are just too much/too big to wear when I do minor construction and landscaping work that I do around my house.

Life is short: learn about and wear boots!