Chris Greta describes himself as “a guy with two girl names.” He is a creative director in the advertising business, who grew up in Los Angeles. He became a fan of boots at a very young age, for practical reasons.
“I was doing my own laundry pretty early,” Greta says. “By about 18 or 19, I realized that I couldn’t find a pair of matching socks. So I figured out that if I got a pair of cowboy boots , it didn’t matter. So I started wearing boots and I just really liked them.”
Greta says destiny led him to move to Texas, where wearing boots isn’t out of the ordinary at all.
“We moved in Texas in 1994 and I figured: ‘Well, I am in Texas, I should get some more boots’,” Greta says.
His daughter went to college to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, and during a visit to her, he discovered the outlet store for one of the big boot manufacturers. There he found some of the the strangest kinds of boots, in large sizes. That was important, since Greta wears a size 13 shoe.
“They probably had 500 or more pairs of boots from 12 to 15,” Greta says. “There’s all kinds of custom, one-offs, strange orders, odd things you’d find in an outlet that you may not find in a normal boot place. I saw them, they fit, so they went home.”
Nowadays, Greta owns a dozen pairs of boots of very different patterns and skins, from alligator to lizard, and some other reptiles that he doesn’t even recognize. And he is proud to wear them during his frequent work trips out of Texas.
“When I’m going to the midwest or New York, or wherever I’m going to be, I pack a pair of boots,” Greta says. “It’s part of who we are as Texans, that we get to do that. You got a pair of good cowboy boots on, people are going to know where you are from.”
Greta says that if he gets another pair of boots, it would be something really ridiculous, just because he considers himself an adopted Texan.
“Because you live in Texas, you get to own a pair of ridiculous boots,” he says. “I think it’s a birthright. I weren’t born here but I got here as soon as I could.”
César Lopez-Linares.
