It's not easy being frugally cheap
Cowgirl Sass And Savvy

By Julie Carter

His pickup and trailer rig speak of a cheap, well, okay, frugal cowboy who makes do with what he has.

Last spring, Dan the team roper upgraded to a 1993 model.

Being the giving kind of guy he is, Dan donated his old truck, that he'd paid $600 for to a friend who was in great need of it. Together they got it painted and overhauled and it was a gem.

Dan's new truck, the '93, came with chrome wheels. The friend with the old truck, in an effort to save Dan's reputation, offered to trade him the plain rims off the old truck for those chrome ones.

The horse trailer, a single-axle one-horse, is one you have to see to believe.

"Houston red" in color, as it was described to me, apparently denotes the rust because that's what it is front to back, top to bottom. It does have new reflector tape on it in lieu of lights.

Held together with baling wire, literally, you have to admire the horse brave enough to get in it.

When I first saw it, I thought it was a "just go down the road to the neighbors' to practice roping" trailer. I soon learned it was the main rig that travels to the major roping events.

I'm real surprised some of those ultra-fancy Texas arenas would let it in the parking lot.

I'd not be surprised if they asked him to park in the back, which wouldn't matter to Dan. His rig doesn't identify his roping ability.

Dan has his money allocated to specific categories - this much for Copenhagen, this much for beer, this much for horse feed. Whatever is left over is all his.

One time he had been saving for a pair of new boots. The pair he was wearing had been resoled a couple of times and were at their life's end, held together, more or less, with duct tape.

It had been a while since he'd shopped for boots and he soon realized his available cash fund, all $45 of it, wasn't going to cover the cost of new boots off the shelf at the Western store.

The weekly horse sale in Stephenville afforded him the opportunity to take a day off from his ranch job.

On the way, he stopped at an on-going flea market at the edge of town. Sure enough, there was a man with a stack of new boots in boxes.

Dan approached him and asked, "You have any size 13 double-E boots?" Both he and the man with boots were relieved to find one another.

Dan tried on the right boot and it was perfect. The man priced them at $30 and an elated Dan immediately began planning what to do with his leftover money.

He grabbed the boots, paid the man and left quickly before anyone could change their mind.

When he got to the horse sale, he decided to put his new boots on. The right one fit like a glove, but the left one, turned out to be a size 11.

At this point, Dan had to decide if he wanted to go with one new boot and one old, or stay with both the old ones.

His pride and being tired of walking on gravel dictated that one old and one new would work just fine.

It was a couple of weeks before Dan could get back down to the flea market and could get settled up with the right size boots.

After he finally had both boots the same size, they lasted quite well and he's just now starting to think about duct tape.

Visit Julie's Web site at julie-carter.com