Gypsy Boots Runs on Garlic, Grins
Gypsy Boots is hunched mid-stream, one arm flung wide, the other pinching his nose shut. Mouth clamped tight, he blows out for all he’s worth. Deprived of an outlet, air builds up behind his face, turning weathered skin a purplish-red. Just before opposing forces appear ready to do serious damage, Boots releases the air with a great whoosh, then inhales with gusto.
“Forcing the old toxins out, breathing fresh air in,” he explained. “I usually do it for hours.”
Today, however, there isn’t time. Leaving his Camarillo home early this morning, Boots is in mid-rounds, delivering organic fruit and healthy dollops of advice to a string of clients, including the Ashram retreat a stone’s throw from this stream meandering through the Santa Monica Mountains.
Boots bends, uproots a handful of watercress and deposits it in his mouth. Chewing and philosophizing, he wades upstream, discoursing, in rapid succession, on health, nutrition and women before tying all three topics neatly together.
“Watch out for things that feel good, taste good and look good,” he advised. “They don’t always end up being beautiful.”
With that he stoops, grabs a large rock and hefts it overhead. Walled in by thick foliage, Gypsy Boots, 79 going on 17, throws his head back and shouts to the heavens, “FIIIIIIIG-arrroooOOO!”, a yodel punctuated by a maniacal grin.
“Nobody ever forgets Gypsy Boots,” he cackled. “They might try, but they can’t forget me.”
Meet Gypsy Boots, a garlic-gobbling, fig-toting, football-tossing impresario of health, goodwill and free expression who, in close to 80 years of brimful life, has left an impression on everyone from Sammy Baugh and Nat King Cole to Danny Kaye and Stevie Wonder. Boots will be the first to tell you so.
“I’ve got millions of fans--right and wrong, black and white, left and right!” said Boots who, buoyed by this support, once jokingly announced his candidacy for President.
“People said, ‘Are you serious?’ ” recalled Boots. “I said, ‘Are the Presidents serious?’ They don’t do anything they say.”
Boots, whose real name is Robert Bootzin, long ago garnered fame, if not fortune, as a Hollywood institution--first in the early ‘60s with appearances on the “Steve Allen Show” (billed as the vegetarian Nature Boy, Boots swung on stage via a vine), then in later years as a cowbell-ringing, grandstanding, head-standing fixture at Los Angeles sporting events, parades and any other occasion that filled two simple requirements.
“Where there’s crowds and cameras, there’s Gypsy Boots,” said Boots, who, in all likelihood, has out-mugged Al Capone.
These days the testaments to his notoriety, and effort, are scattered about the Camarillo apartment he calls home. Pictures with actors (Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, James Garner), athletes (Magic Johnson, Chris Evert, Arnold Palmer) and singers (Glen Campbell, Andy Williams). A Los Angeles City Council resolution taped to the wall recognizes him for his “dedication, goodwill and love.” T-shirts and sweat shirts adorned with the logo, “Gypsy Boots Runs on Kyolic Power” (a liquid garlic extract Boots downs at irregular intervals throughout the day).
Whatever Boots runs on, it appears to be in no danger of running out. Separated from his wife of about 35 years, Boots moved from Hollywood to Camarillo in October on the advice of a friend and wasted little time turning the county on its collective ear. Operating his roving health-food business out of a van emblazoned with a five-foot self-portrait and crammed with figs, prunes, organic fruits and other sundries, Boots descends on the unsuspecting with blitzkrieg-like subtlety, often breaking the ice with a few tosses of a weather-beaten football.
“He’s off the wall,” said Dan Marinos, owner of Dan’s Avocados, a Casitas Springs produce store. “He walked into the store wanting to sell some dates and organic juices and the next thing I know he’s throwing a football at me. The guy is amazing. I swear he can throw the football 50 yards, a beautiful spiral.”
“Like Joe Montana!” crowed Boots, not one to dodge a compliment. “It’s unbelievable. The ageless athlete! Nobody in the world can do what I do with a football!”
This wellspring of enthusiasm has served Boots well. He grew up in San Francisco, the child of poor Russian immigrants, and left home at 20. Before his marriage to Lois Bloemker and a stab at convention (three sons and a health-food business), he spent 10 years wandering California with a small group of self-styled vagabonds. Picking fruit in Lodi, sleeping in haystacks in Sonoma, holing up in the hills outside Palm Springs, Boots and his group led a hard life by conventional standards. Not one for convention, Boots takes a different view.
“I sang, I danced, I laughed my way through life,” Boots said. “I went to bed with the birds, slept under the stars and woke with the sun. I was the first happy, homeless nature boy.”
At one point those travels took Boots through a Ventura County most residents would be hard-pressed to recognize now.
“I came here 40 years ago,” Boots said. “Picked oranges and avocados, slept in the hills. I was surprised to come back here and see how everything had grown. They should build around the fruit orchards. We shouldn’t tear down food when so many people are hungry.”
Fodder for fond memories (“Once I was sleeping in a haystack in Sonoma and I dreamt I was being kissed by the farmer’s beautiful daughter and I woke up and ‘Moo!’, a cow was licking my ear!”), those travels also formed the simple values Boots has carried through life. Respect your fellow man (“We’re all one race, the human race.”). Don’t confuse sex with love (“If sex keeps a marriage together, why are millions of people getting divorced?”). Value kindness (“The more you give, the more you get.”). Exercise daily (“Don’t use your stomach until you’ve used the other parts of your body.”). Don’t grow old before your time (“Refuse to grow up, you’ll never regret it.”). Promote these messages through word and deed, and if you have to stand on your head and ring a cowbell to do it, then do it.
