By Edward Loya 

Growing up during the Urban Cowboy movie craze in the early 1980s, Mike Vaughn wore cowboy boots and, when he turned 14, he started bull riding at local rodeos. As Mike explained it, “Everybody wore boots and western attire and that was the thing to do.” 

On March 4, 1965, Mike was born in the small town of Bridgeport, Texas. When he was an infant, his parents left him, along with one of his two sisters, with his grandmother, Robbie Vaughn, who raised them as a single grandparent in Grand Prairie, Texas (about 12 miles outside of Dallas). Robbie was a major influence in his life. Whenever Mike told her that he could not do something, she told him, “Can’t never could do nothing.” 

Mike became interested in leatherwork as a teenager. In his sophomore year at Grand Prairie High School, he took an elective course on leather tooling where he learned the basics of leather tooling, how to use lace and how to make wallets. 

A rodeo friend of his worked at a repair shop in Irving, Texas, called London’s Boot and Shoe Repair. After taking a pair of boots there for repair, Mike asked for a job and worked there the summer between his sophomore and junior year. 

During his junior year, Mike received a spot in his high school’s work program class, whereby he was able to attend classes for half the day and spend the second half earning wages at a qualifying job. Mike’s work program teacher, Mr. Griffith, told Mike he should apply for a job at Bramhall’s Boot Repair in Grand Prairie, so that he could continue working in boot and shoe repair. When Mike agreed, Mr. Griffith called his friend, Jeff Bramhall, who told Mr. Griffith, “Send him down here and we’ll visit with him.” 

After school that day, Mike went to see Jeff at the shop. When he arrived, Jeff was out to lunch but Jeff’s father, Jack, was there. Mike told Jack, “Mr. Griffith from school sent me down here to get a job,” to which Jack replied, “I don’t know who this Mr. Griffith guy is. I ain’t hiring [you]. Get out of here.” 

The next day, Mike went back to school and told Mr. Griffith what happened. Jeff asked Mr. Griffith to send Mike back to the shop and the same thing happened again, but this time Jack told Mike, “Didn’t I run [you] out of here yesterday?” Mike said, “Yes, sir.” “I’m going to run [you] out of here again today,” Jack said, “I ain’t giving you no job. I told you that yesterday. Don’t come back.” On the third try, Jeff was there and he convinced his father to hire Mike. 

Bramhall’s Boot Repair was a family-owned shop with three employees: Jeff, his father Jack, and Jeff’s mother, Wyota Bramhall. For being a small shop, Bramhall’s handled a large volume of shoe and boot repair work. 

 Mike worked every day at Bramhall’s during his junior year through his senior year. During the school year, Mike got out of school at lunchtime and worked until 5:30pm and a half day on Saturdays. During the summer, Mike worked a full 40-hour work week. 

Mike described his time in the shop as, “It was work, work, work and go as fast as you could all day long.” Mike learned how to repair half soles and heels, straps and zippers, and how to put on full soles and heels, new welts on boots and shoes, and heel caps on ladies’ shoes. Mike gained skills using tools and machines he would later use as a bookmaker including sanders, sole stitchers, 5-and-1 machines, lip knives and other shoe making knives. 

When Mike graduated from high school in May 1983, he planned to continue working at Bramhall’s. Just a few days after his high school graduation, however, Mike went home for lunch on a Friday during Fort Worth’s Chisholm Trail Days festival and watched a news segment on NBC, featuring bootmakers Clyde and Joe Vasquez at M.L. Leddy’s in Fort Worth. The story talked about the dying art of western bootmaking. 

“It was just a coincidence that I happened to go home for lunch that day. The way they were telling the story made it sound like they needed an apprentice,” Mike said. Prior to that, Mike had seen the work of Garland bootmaker Henry Leopold and replaced the soles and heels on cowboy boots, but he had never met a custom bootmaker or observed the various steps involved in making a pair of custom boots. 

Mike called Leddy’s during his day off that following Monday, and spoke with store manager Jim Martin. Mike told him that he had been doing boot and shoe repair for a couple of years and that he watched the NBC story on Clyde and Joe Vasquez. To Mike’s knowledge, he was the only person to call Leddy’s looking for a job after watching the story on NBC. 

Jim told him to call back the next day to speak with Leddy’s owner, Wilson Franklin. When Mike called back the next day, Wilson told Mike to come to Leddy’s to show him what he knows because he was “not going to hire anybody over the phone.” 

?Mike visited Leddy’s the following Monday. Joe Vasquez met with Mike and walked him through the shop. Joe asked Mike various questions about what he knew how to do and how he was taught to do it. After Joe’s visit with Mike, which essentially amounted to an informal interview, Joe told Wilson, “Wilson, I think this kid will work. He seems to know enough to earn his keep anyway.” Wilson responded, “I’ll take it from here.” 

Wilson then told Mike, “I swore I’d never hire another kid as long as I lived because all they ever do is [mess things] up. But as you can tell, Clyde and Joe are not exactly spring chickens so I need to get someone in here to learn this.” Then, Wilson pointed at Mike and said, “The first time you [mess] up a pair of high dollar boots, the door swings out just like it does in, do you understand that?” Mike replied, “Yes, sir.” With a big grin on his face, Wilson said, “When do you want to start?” 

Mike gave two weeks’ notice to Bramhall’s. Jack advised, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. If they try to show you something different than what we do, the last thing you want to say is that’s not how I was taught to do it. I promise you their way is the best. So, when they show you something, you do it their way. Don’t say that’s not how I was taught down in Grand Prairie.” Jeff told him, “They [Clyde and Joe Vasquez] are really, really good. I have seen their work and everybody that knows anything about boots knows them.” 

M.L. Leddy’s, which celebrated its 100-year anniversary this year, is one of the oldest continuously running, family-owned custom bootmaking businesses in Texas. Clyde and Joe Vasquez started working for Frank Leddy in Fort Worth in the 1940s and are credited with helping Leddy’s achieve its reputation as a top custom bootmaking shop. 

The Vasquez brothers’ commitment to delivering the finest workmanship to every customer is evident in a story Clyde told a KXAS-TV reporter during an interview in the early 1980s. Clyde said, “Two or three fellas come from somewheres and they happen to see the tag name and say, ‘Hey, that’s my boot you’re working on.’ I said, ‘Oh, it is.’ He said, ‘Yeah, now, do a real good job on it because that’s mine.’ Well, I don’t think I ever did ‘a real good job’ on anybody. I don’t look at it that way. This guy, if it’s a $1,000 boot or a $2,500 boot, he’s gonna get the same work as the guy that paid $200 because you can only do so good and everybody’s gonna get that.”  

When Wilson hired Mike, he wanted Clyde and Joe to transfer all their knowledge to Mike, so that Mike would have the ability to make boots in Fort Worth from start to finish. Clyde told Wilson he would stay at Leddy’s long enough to teach Mike everything he knew and then he would retire permanently. Clyde said, “Then it’s going to be all on his shoulders.” 

Mike’s experience in the repair business enabled him to learn quickly, so Clyde focused initially on teaching him about heel heights, the terminology for different heels and heel slopes, and the different types of toes (e.g., needle point, box toes, wider box toes, French toes, boot toes and round toes). 

With precious little time to teach Mike, Clyde employed a strict teaching style. At times, Clyde would show Mike a step and ask him, “Are you paying attention?” To which Mike would respond, “Yes, sir.” Then when Clyde would finish executing the step on one boot, he would turn to Mike and hand him the other boot and tell him, “Ok, now it’s your turn,” and walk away. 

When Joe would complain to Clyde telling him, “Clyde, you can’t teach him like that,” Clyde would respond, “What, I just got through asking him if he was paying attention and he said ‘yes.’ ” 

Joe’s teaching style, on the other hand, was much more deliberate. Mike explained, “Joe was a whole lot more patient. He would sit there and talk to you and explain things as to what he was doing, why he was doing it, what order he was doing it and why he did it in that order.” 

Clyde taught Mike the minutest of techniques in custom bootmaking. For example, Clyde taught Mike the finer points of topstitching, telling him, “You never want to look at the needle, ever. You look at the space between the edge of the wheel and the last line or the chalk line. If it’s your first row, you look at the space between the edge of the wheel and the chalk line and the needle comes down in the center every time. Every time. Never look at the needle because if you do, you’ll mess up.” 

In 1985, two years after Mike joined the company, Clyde retired. Mike and Joe continued to work together that year, until an incident over Christmas Eve. Mike recalled the following events as if they happened yesterday. 

The Leddy’s boot and saddlemakers normally arrived at work at 6am and went home at 2pm, as a result Leddy’s often could not help customers with minor repair work in the afternoons. Wilson and store manager, Jim Martin, approached Mike with a proposition asking him if he would mind arriving to work at 9am and leaving at 6pm, rather than keep the same hours as the other workers. Because Mike was still commuting from his grandmother’s house at Grand Prairie, Mike agreed. 

By December 1985, a new store manager took over for Jim asked Mike why he arrived at 9am, instead of 6am like everyone else. Mike told the new store manager about the arrangement he made with Wilson and the store manager’s predecessor. In response, the new store manager told him, “Well, since I’m the new store manager, you’re going to get here at 6am like the rest of them do and you’re going to stay here until 6pm.” Mike, who had never been someone to push around, replied, “No, I’m not going to do that. Your boss and my boss, Wilson, who owns this company is the one who made this arrangement with me and that’s what I’m going to do.” 

The store manager told him, “Well, here’s the deal. You better be here at 6 o’clock tomorrow morning,” to which Mike responded, “Well, I can tell you right now, I am not going to be.” The next morning, on December 23^rd, the store manager was waiting for Mike. Recalling the details as if it were yesterday, Mike said, when he arrived, the store manager asked him, “What did I tell you yesterday?” Mike responded, “You told me to be here at 6. What did I tell you yesterday? I told you I wasn’t going to be here at 6, I was going to be here at 9 and stay until 6, like I always have.” 

The store manager said he would give him “one more chance,” and if Mike did not arrive at 6am the next morning, he wouldn’t “work for Leddy’s no more.” Mike told him, “Well, I can tell you right now I’m not going to be here.” The next morning, on Christmas Eve, Mike arrived at ten minutes before 9am. The store manager told him, “You get your [expletive] and get out of here because you’re fired.” 

Ironically, the incident resulted in Mike getting paid more money than he was making before, including (after everyone had cooled off) better employment terms at Leddy’s. During this time, Joe retired and Leddy’s could not find a replacement bootmaker. Eventually, the store manager offered Mike his job back (twice) and Mike accepted on the condition that he be paid on his terms and permitted to come in, work and leave whenever he wanted. 

Mike worked at Leddy’s for two more years. During that time, he moved into his own place in Millsap, Texas, and continued to shoe horses for customers. After the incident with the store manager, Mike resolved that his future as a bootmaker would not be contingent on the mood of a supervisor. Mike purchased equipment from a repair shop in Idaho Springs, Colorado. 

Mike’s bootmaking business grew organically. When he would come home from Leddy’s, he would find a couple pairs of boots waiting for him with a note from one of his clients he shoed horses for asking him to replace the soles and heels on the boots. 

After leaving Leddy’s, Mike spent a lot of time at cutting horse events and met a lot of cutting horse people who became clients. Mike regularly attended all major cutting horse events in Fort Worth. 

Mike credits his friend, Jill Curran, who worked for Oxbow South Ranch, for introducing him to a number of cutting horse customers. At one time, Jill arranged for Mike to fit customers for new boots from Oxbow’s booth at a cutting horse show. “Boy, you’re not old enough to know how to make boots like you do already,” was a common refrain from his early customers who were surprised that a young man in his early 20s could do what he did. 

Mike also credits Leddy’s salesman, Bob Hunter, for directing customers to Mike for repair work. When Leddy’s was too busy to help customers, Bob would tell them, “We can’t get them done on that timeline, but he can [referring to Mike]. He learned to make boots at Leddy’s. He would do the same thing we can.” 

Mike attended the cutting horse shows during the day and worked on customer repairs in the evening, often returning customer repair orders within a day or two while the shows were ongoing. 

Mike’s work for the late Atascadero, California spur maker Gordon Hayes is an example of the way in which Mike built his business. One day, Gordon walked up to Mike at a show and told him that he had two pairs of Leddy’s boots. Gordon said, “They are the best fitting pair of boots I ever had in my life. I need new soles on both of them. But I’m scared to death to leave them with somebody for fear they won’t come back the same.” 

In recognition of Mike’s apparent competence as a young bootmaker, Gordon came up with a plan. Gordon told Mike, “Here’s what I’m gonna do. I was a young kid once like you are and an old man gave me a chance. So, I’m gonna leave you one pair of boots. Put the soles and heels on them. If you screw them up, I won’t ever talk to you again and you won’t ever get the opportunity to work on the other pair.”  

Mike took the pair of boots and two days later he brought them back. Gordon put them on that morning and wore them the whole day. “I’m gonna tell you something,” Gordon said, “these feel exactly like they did when I left. They’re perfect. Do you have enough time to get the other pair done?” 

The next year, Gordon walked up to Mike with a pair of spurs, stating, “Here, I made these for you.” Mike told him, “Gordon, I don’t remember ordering no spurs. There’s no way I can afford your spurs,” in response to which Gordon said, “Nobody said anything about you paying for them. I want to show my appreciation for working on my boots.” 

Recalling that experience, Mike said, “I appreciate what Gordon and people like him did for me. That is why I send customers to Josh [Duval] and Jarret [Van Curen]. Somebody took a chance on me and I know bootmakers like them can make it, if people give them the chance.” 

In the late 90s, Mike moved to Henrietta, Texas. Between 2000 and 2010, Mike worked for the electric company TXU (now Oncor) as a lineman working on electrical power lines, but continued to make a couple pairs of boots a month from his shop at home. 

When asked why he pursued this new line of work, Mike said, “Making boots and shoeing horses is all that I had ever done. So, I thought if I am ever going to do something else, I better give it a try. I had some friends who worked for the electric company and figured I would give it a try.” 

On January 12^th, 2002, Mike married his wife Phyllis and, that same year, they moved to their place in Bowie, Texas. Mike set up his shop in a separate building on his property. Mike also set up a place for his horses and built a horse training arena. 

Mike enjoyed his work as a lineman, but he found that when the union came into the picture, “the same bosses who were great to work for just weren’t so great to work for.” Mike never joined the union, but that did not stop management from treating all the workers the same. “They took it as, every single one of you joined the union and it’s us against y’all,” Mike said. 

In 2010, Mike felt the gravitational pull to the custom bootmaking business. In March 2010, Mike, who had not been active on the cutting horse scene for some time, went for the first time to a show in Graham, Texas, called the Cattlemen’s Cutting, where he picked up a significant number of boot orders. In May, he went to the Breeder’s Invitational Cutting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he received more orders. Mike found that there was a huge market for his custom boots. 

That May, while Mike was in the air in the bucket preparing to fix a power line, lightning struck him. “It was like a canon went off in my ear,” he said, “I had all my protective gear, but if I had not been wearing all that stuff, there is no telling what would have happened. If I had been grounded [meaning actually touching or working on a telephone pole], I would have been dead on the spot.” 

A couple weeks later, when he was working in that same area, lightning struck the ground five feet away from Mike’s crew’s work truck. “That day, I went in and gave my two weeks’ notice,” he said. “I thought somebody’s trying to tell me something and there is a lot safer way for me to make a living. I went in and gave my notice and I just never looked back.” 

In June 2010, with roughly 35 customer boot orders waiting to be completed, Mike resumed making boots again full time. Mike’s business picked up quickly when he started going to horse shows again, as he put it, “It took off like a grass fire.” 

In 2012, one of Mike’s longtime clients, Dalene Cameron, suggested that Mike would make “a great TV show.” Mike had been making boots for Craig and Dalene Cameron since the 1990s (Dalene had been a longtime client before she married Craig). 

Mike laughed off the notion of being the subject of a TV show, but Dalene persisted. She said, “You know Craig has a show on RFD-TV,” and asked if he would mind if they did a show on his bootmaking business. Mike did not know that Craig Cameron had a TV show, but when he realized Dalene was being serious, he told her, “If you are gonna do that, give me a couple weeks’ notice so that I can have things ready at different stages.” 

After a couple months went by, Mike received a call from Dalene on a Friday at 5pm. “We will be there on Monday at 8am,” she said. 

In November 2012, Craig Cameron featured Mike as a guest on Cameron’s RFD-TV show, Ride Smart with Craig Cameron American Horsemanship. Craig introduced Mike as the person he considered to be the “finest custom bootmaker in the world.” Since January 27^th, 2013, when the show’s producer posted a recording of the show on YouTube, there have been more than 1.1 million views. 

When asked to describe the impact the show had on his business, Mike said, “It has been a madhouse ever since. Because of that show that Craig and Dalene did, I’ve gotten in front of more people than I ever could have imagined. I’ve got customers from Australia. I’ve got some from England and Turkey I make a lot of boots for. Guys from Brazil. I have a guy from France that I’ve made boots for. And they’ve all seen that recording on the internet.” 

Mike typically makes 70-75 pairs of boots a year, mostly for repeat customers. Mike normally gets six to ten new customers a year. His base boot starts at $2,500 and goes to “however carried away someone wants to get.” 

When asked to describe his clientele, Mike said, “I break mine down into thirds. A third of them have unique problems—different sized feet, hammer toes, bunions and foot problems where they cannot buy anything in the store. A third like good quality boots that last. A third of them can just tear up a store-bought boot in 60 days to where it does not look like a pair of boots anymore.” 

Mike continues to make boots the way Clyde and Joe taught him. He said, “It is very rare, very rare, if I get off the path that I was taught. Because it seems like every time I get off the path that I was taught, it causes trouble.” 

Boot collector Mark Fletcher said, “Mike reminds me of the ‘old time’ bootmakers of the 1940s-1960s, which he should, he learned the craft from some of the best at M.L. Leddy’s in Fort Worth. Mike is very respectful of those who taught him – their ways and methods.?Mike’s work continues to pay homage to those bootmaking icons and he continues that tradition by helping newcomers to the industry.” 

For years, Mike has been a key figure at the Wichita Falls, Texas, Boot and Saddle Makers Roundup, which is holding its 34th annual show this year. 

Originally established in 1989, in Burnet, Texas, by bootmaker Jack Reed and saddlemaker Sam Harris, the Boot and Saddle Makers Roundup has grown in size over the years. In 1993, the late bootmaker Eddie Kimmel and his wife Kathy Kimmel assumed responsibility for administering the show, moving the show to Brownwood, Texas, in 1994, and then to its current location in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 2001. 

Over the years, Mike developed a strong friendship with Eddie. Kathy explained, “Mike and Eddie agreed on a lot of things of how to make a boot. We just had a lot in common like that. Mostly, they just really enjoyed and loved to visit. They would talk two to three times a week, and it was all about boots and the way they would do each part of the boot. And they just enjoyed that comradery and getting to do that.” 

Mike won every contest category he entered at the Boot and Saddle Maker’s Roundup: namely, Top Stitching Boot (2007), Working Cowboy Boot (2008), Dress Boot (2009), Professional’s Choice (2009) and Master’s Class Boot (2011). In December 2019, Texas Monthly magazine recognized him as one of Texas’s top bootmakers.? 

Rick Graziane, who owns three pairs of Mike’s boots and is waiting on a fourth, said, “Mike makes a boot that spans the full gamut from a hardworking cowboy boot, a ranch boot and a boot for the boardroom. His boots are tough enough for a rancher and luxurious enough for a CEO. And when I get in the truck to go to Mike’s place to pick up a pair of boots, I know they are going to fit.” 

In 2010, at Eddie Kimmel’s request, Mike assumed responsibility for overseeing the boot contest at the Boot and Saddle Maker’s Roundup. Fletcher, who has attended every show for the last 22 years, stated, “Mike has done a magnificent job coordinating the Wichita Falls Boot contest.?He has moved the contest from a popularity contest to a more merit-based event and improves the event every year.”  

Since 2015, Mike has held a Q&A session with esteemed bootmaker Mike Allred, of Whitesboro, Texas, and other bootmakers, wherein they talk to others about the finer points of bootmaking. Mike Allred said, “When it comes to bootmakers, Mike Vaughn is a ‘Top Hand.’” 

At the relatively young age of 57, Mike nearly has as much experience making custom cowboy boots as his mentors Clyde and Joe. Mike’s presence in our community is the embodiment of the American custom bootmaking tradition. And his willingness to share, explain and demonstrate the techniques he has learned helps keep that tradition alive. 

Photographs Courtesy of Mike Vaughn