It was a pretty good
yard sale.
The Lady of the
House found all sorts of old crap priced cheap and there were a bunch of old
CDs for me to go through at 50 cents apiece.
I finished up going
through the music and looked up to see where The Lady of the House had wandered
off to.
I saw her in a back
room of the house looking over a bunch of kitchenware. I headed her way.
That room didn’t
have much light. I stood there for a
bit. As my eyes got used to the dimness
I saw that there were all kinds of coffee mugs on shelves all around the
room. One shelf had a handmade sign that
read “CUPS 25¢/6 FOR $1.”
I was looking for
something unique, something different.
There were matched
cups, odd cups, cups from restaurants and fast food joints. There amongst all the different kinds of cups
was a plastic cup shaped like a tall daiquiri glass. There was writing on it that brought back a
bunch of memories….
BOOT SCOOTERS
COME SCOOT YOUR BOOTS
ON OUR DANCE FLOOR
#1 FUN SPOT
ROSWELL, NM
I have been to Boot
Scooters once upon a time, long ago.
I always remembered
the place for a couple of reasons. One
was, if I have the story right, my buddy Wayne K…legendary Pecos Valley radio
personality…came up with the idea for the name for the club.
The other reason I
remember it was because I made an ass of myself there about 28 years ago.
But one thing at a
time.
As I remember there were
a few places to “get yer drink on” in Roswell back when I lived there at beginning
of the 1990’s, working at a country radio station. There was a bar on North Main where the
hometown country folks went, another one in the big motel near New Mexico
Military Institute where all kinds of folks went and another one down near The
K-Mart that catered to folks in town who fancied themselves as someone else
besides themselves. Oh yeah, there was
that one at the steakhouse and another at another motel not far from there.
I don’t know the
whole story but part of my buddy Wayne’s job at the radio station was to call
on accounts around town for radio advertising.
It was during his rounds he caught wind of the folks who were firing up
a new bar in town.
It was 1990 and the
western swing band Asleep At The Wheel had come out with a new album with a
song “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” which no doubt brought in a chunk of grocery money
for Texas songwriter Ronnie Dunn. He and
a fellow songwriter named Brooks would get together not long after that as the
duo Brooks & Dunn. Their version of
the song a couple of years later would be a big country hit.
Anyway, the way I
heard it, taking a cue from the song Wayne suggested “Boot Scooters” as the
name for the new club. The owners mulled
it over and went with it.
I probably
wouln’t’ve made it over to Boot Scooters if Wayne hadn’ta insisted I come on to
the south side of Roswell and try out the new club.
I had been going to
the bar at the motel and having beers.
Hell, it was just a short walk or bicycle ride from my groovy bachelor
pad on the north side of town.
The more I hung
around the motel bar the more I got to learning more about Roswell. Over time I was finding folks recognized me
from being “that guy on the country radio in the morning.” Folks were buying me beers and I was waking
up at 5 the next morning still feeling the effects of the free cold ones.
Then there was that
one night that some drunk lady with a German accent came right up to me at the
bar while I was enjoying my beer…
“I know who you
are,” she said getting right in my face.
“You don’t know who I am.”
“No ma’am, I don’t
know who you are,” I said. “I just know
you have a store downtown.”
“Well,” she
said. “You better not talk about me on
the radio. If you do my husband will squash
you like a bug.”
I don’t know what I
did to irritate the sensibilities of this woman but somehow I had.
I seemed to have
that ability with the fairer sex at bars.
After all, there was
that time that I was challenged to my first and only bar fight…by a woman. I was at a nightclub in Fort Myers,
Florida…just minding my own business…picking out some tunes on the jukebox when
“BAM” an empty bottle exploded next to me.
“YOU BETTER PLAY
SOME GOOD SHIT,” came a woman’s voice.
I turned around to
see a woman whose leg was in a cast, her crutches next to her as she sat at a
table.
“I’M TIRED OF
LISTENING TO BAD SHIT,” she yelled.
I saw the bartender
pick up the phone. A few minutes later
she got a free ride in a police car. I
reckon the bartender was ticked off that he’d have to clean up her mess.
I took the angry
German woman as a sign that it was time to take Wayne up on his invitation to
come get my drink on at Boot Scooters.
I think I can even
remember the month and day I first went to Boot Scooters…Saturday, June 27,
1990. Now let me type that date into the
internet and see if I got it right……..nope….June 27, 1990 was a Wednesday…so it
was Saturday, June 23, 1990.
My girlfriend at the
time was off on some business conference somewhere so I didn’t have anything to
do BUT get my drink on.
So my buddy Wayne
came on by my groovy bachelor pad and picked me up…we were off to Boot Scooters.
We walked in the bar
and it was everything I expected a place like Boot Scooters to be: A DJ booth, DJ playing good country music
with a beat, a big wooden dance floor with folks line dancing and lots of
waitresses serving lots of refreshing adult libations.
There were Mexican
beers to be drunk and I drank ‘em…I don’t know how many. After a while a couple of things
happened: Every time our waitress walked
by I yelled “WOOOOO-HOOOOO!” I don’t
know exactly why I yelled “WOOOOO-HOOOOO!” every time our waitress walked by, I
just did. The other thing was I started
dancing with varied and sundry women in the club who were in a varied and
sundry state of attractiveness…and dancing barefoot too….barefoot on Boot
Scooters wooden dance floor.
I regaled Wayne with
stories, jokes were told, assessments on the attractiveness of the available
women were expounded.
And then before you
could say “Jack Robinson” me and my bare feet were off to the dance floor to
dance with Raynelle who worked at the farm supply store.
Then I was back in
my chair at our table, drinking more beer and here came our waitress again.
“WOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!” I yelled.
Oops!
Waitress stopped and
turned.
It was only then
that I noticed she had a nametag: Sue
Ellen
“Okay asshole,” she
yelled, dropping her tray and pointing at me, “that’s your last woo-hoo
tonight.”
“I…” I started to
speak but Wayne put his hand on my shoulder.
“We’re just
leaving,” said Wayne.
“We are?” I turned
and looked at Wayne and he was giving me a raised eyebrow face that said it was
time to go.”
I put my boots back
on, grabbed my hat and Wayne and I headed outside.
“Bro,” said Wayne as
we walked out into the parking lot, “She was about to have your ass thrown
out. You don’t want to be on their shit
list, that ain’t good for your reputation around town.”
“Well,” I said
looking at Wayne, “You know what my ol’
buddy Wayne would say, ‘OH WELL.’”
As the years went on
I would say that a lot, “You know what my old buddy Wayne would say.” When I moved away from Roswell people thought
Wayne was an imaginary friend.
Anyway, I woke up
later that morning with an odd condition…the whole world was sideways. I couldn’t figure out how that worked. I looked in the mirror and I wasn’t holding
my head sideways so I don’t know what that was, I didn’t know how I achieved
that, forgot how many beers I drank…but it was weird.
I decided to go back
to bed until I didn’t see things sideways.
The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
I didn’t answer it.
E P I L O G U E
Yeah, that was a
long time ago.
I was a different
person then.
The Lady of the
House tells me it was a good thing we didn’t meet in 1990…
“For one thing I
wouldn’t’ve lived in Roswell,” she said, “For another you were a COUNTRY DJ and
for another I believe you were a bit obnoxious.”
I posted a picture
of the Boot Scooters cup on The Facebook.
Later I got a
message from Rhonda in west Texas. We
used to work together at the Roswell radio station. She wrote that Boot Scooters was closed,
closed since a summer storm blew the roof off a few years ago.
Rhonda sent me a
picture she took of the place as she drove by.
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