Let me start by saying I got my drivers license when I turned 15 and on that day I also got my first pickup truck. Granted it was a 1969 Chevy longbed fleet side, 3 on the tree, V -8 that was wrung out but it was mine. One of the first things I did was put a gun rack in the rear window and set my fathers Remington 870 Wingmaster 12 gauge, that at the age of ten I had reached across the duck blind and commandeered from him.

I remember him pretending it was too much gun for a ten year old but kept an eye and a smile on me as I racked it and dropped a couple of mallards. Before that I was single shot 20 ga H&R so I was on my way. I'll never forget how grown up I felt shooting that gun. That next week he gave me my first pair of hip boots which I wore everywhere, folded down when not in the blind because that was how the old men wore them.

The second thing I did to that truck was slip a pair of Lacrosse ankle fit rubber knee boots between the bed and the cab, behind the drivers side, upside down. I parked that truck in my high school parking lot alongside many other trucks with the same gun racks, boots, confederate flag rear window decals, CB whip antennas, Warn winches and gumbo mudders with white rims. All had guns, under dash Pioneer cassette players and Jenson 6 x 9 Triaxials behind the seats which blared anything from Alan Parsons to Rush to David Allan Coes "Long Haired Redneck." Not one of those trucks ever had a locked door and not one ever had so much as a quarter missing from an overstuffed ashtray.

After school we made use of our trucks, our dogs, our weapons and our boots. And man did we have fun. We shot, we killed, we stuck trucks, we got muddy, we drank beer and we went home and our parents had dinner ready.

Many things have changed from those days to this. Gone are the gun racks. They were the first to go, then the white rims I guess, the CB's and whip antennas and although I never had the confederate flag window you would be hard pressed to find one now. And of course we've all upgraded our sound systems and wouldn't think of leaving a vehicle unlocked.

However, always, and I mean always, I have had a pair of rubber boots stuffed between the bed and the cab of my truck. This is for now over 40 years and mostly I've had a toolbox so they are even a bit more secure. Never once have they been touched.

Until 5:00 pm today. I stopped at Barnes and Noble, got out and while finishing a call stood looking directly at them. I've always made the habit of checking them and pushing them down in case they were somehow slipping loose. I hung up, walked inside, bought my mother a book for her birthday, walked out and my 6 month old Muck Fieldrunners were gone. Not a boot print to trace.

I wish I could just stay in the fields. Sorry so long, I just thought about my rubber boots all the way home and it makes me more sad than mad. Apparently someone needed them more than me and I'll just go get another pair and shove them right back in the same spot but somehow it just seems like it won't quite be the same.