Houston rodeo is their time to shine
Boot buffing tradition all part of stepping out with the rodeo crowd
Norman Hardy took a rag and polish to the 9-year-old’s cowboy boots, which were caked with dirt after a longhorn cattle show earlier in the day.
The shoe shiner scrubbed and buffed the tan leather as the boy and his mother looked on.
“Looking sharp,” said Amanda Robertson, a Lubbock native, as she whipped out her smartphone to capture her son’s first shoe shine. Cole Robertson flashed a big smile, and after a playful tussle initiated by Hardy, handed him $15 for his handiwork.
Shoe shining has become something of a relic with the rise of athletic shoes and the decline of boots since the 1970s. But the time-honored tradition is still practiced in abundance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where Western attire — particularly cowboy boots — takes front and center stage.
Hardy, 55, is one of dozens of shoe shiners at the Houston rodeo, working to keep cowboy boots free of mud, muck and
manure. The rodeo is their time to shine, with the opportunity to make between $200 and $600 a day. Over the course of the threeweek event, it can add up to thousands of dollars.
It’s lucrative enough that Hardy traveled two days on a Greyhound bus from his home in Shelbyville, Tenn., south of Nashville, to shine boots at the Houston rodeo, billed as the largest livestock exhibition and rodeo in the world. After paying for his travel expenses, a hotel near NRG Stadium and three weeks of food, Hardy said he hopes to take home at least $2,000.
“I shine shoes at our rodeo in Tennessee, but it’s not as big,” said Hardy, who works full time as a wedding and birthday party deejay and started shining shoes two years ago as a side gig. “Making that long journey here, it’s worth it.”
Most days of the year, local shoe shiners polish dress shoes at office towers, airports and convention centers. But every March, it’s all about shining cowboy boots at the Houston rodeo, where men, women and even young children are sporting the iconic Texan footwear.
“Shoe shining is a big thing at the rodeo,” said Greg Kennedy, 53, a Houston native who has been shining boots at the rodeo for 20 years. “People don’t want poop all over their boots.”
Two vendors, The Classic Shine and Joe’s Shoe Shine Services, combined operate more than 60 chairs at NRG Center.
Calls for “boot shine” and “shine ‘em up” ring out daily across the exhibition hall. The chairs are mostly empty in the mornings, but fill up closer to the evening rodeo and concert events.
Denise Pullen, who owns The Classic Shine, said her company, based in Plano, served nearly 11,000 customers at last year’s rodeo.
The Houston rodeo is her 35year-old company’s biggest event, where shoe shiners polish more boots in three weeks than their counterparts at the San Diego and Louisville airports do in an entire year, she said.
Like horse-riders and cattle ranchers, shoe shiners come from across the country to work here. Pullen’s shoe shiners this year hail from Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
“Houston loves their boots one month out of the year,” Pullen said. “Everybody is a cowboy or cowgirl in March.”
Shoe shiners can polish on average 25 pairs of boots during an eight-hour day. Those who hustle can clean upwards of 60 pairs a day, especially during bustling weekends. Each shoe shine takes about seven or eight minutes.
Over the course of the rodeo, the top shoe shiners can polish more than 1,000 boots.
The Classic Shine charges $9 for adult boots; Joe’s is $8. Both charge $5 for children’s boots. Shoe shiners make most of their money off tips.
“It’s a good day’s work,” said Kennedy, who makes about $400 on a busy day.
Shoe shiners see all kinds of cowboy boots at the rodeo. Working boots caked with dirt. Expensive boots studded with rhinestones. Show boots made from exotic skins, like ostrich, lizard and shark.
“When I started, there were mostly black and brown boots,” Kennedy said. “Now, there are blue, green and turquoise, all kinds of colors.”
Shoe shiners can always tell which boots belong to real cowboys and which to city slickers. Freddie Kallie, a 71-year-old Houston shoe shiner, finds most of the cowboy boots he sees at the rodeo are the latter — relatively clean save for some dust from the back of their owners’ closets.
The retired insurance agent has been shining shoes for 25 years, mostly at Sam Houston Race Park.
“A lot of my customers, they get their boots out once a year and they shine them once a year, and it’s here,” Kallie said. ‘People want to look good in their cowboy boots at the rodeo.”
Hardy, who has been deejaying for 50 years, said he joined the shoe shining business a couple of years ago because it’s easy to get into, the money is good and he liked meeting new people.
He learned using brushes, rags and Lincoln shoe polish borrowed from a friend at his barbershop in Tennessee, and he hasn’t stopped shining since.
“I love it,” Hardy said. “Shoe shining has been a part of life from the cowboys on down. I’m glad to be part of this history.”