Learning the Ropes

“You say you’re not from Texas

Man, as if I couldn’t tell

You think you pull your boots

on right

And wear your hat so well

So pardon me my laughter

‘Cause I sure do understand

Even Moses got excited

When he saw the promised land

That’s right, you’re not

from Texas . . .”

--Lyle Lovett, “Road to Ensenada”

In Orange County as in Texas, you can tell real cowboys from wannabes by a long country mile. From the way they wear their hats to how long they wear their jeans, cowboys have an unwritten but surprisingly strict dress code.

Local city slickers who have taken up horseback riding to seek respite from congested freeways and stress-filled workdays soon discover that not only do they need to figure out how to stay on the darned horse, but they must also master the ways of authentic cowboy style.

“I’ve had ladies show up for riding lessons in shorts,” says Kathy Holman, owner of Ortega Equestrian Center in San Juan Capistrano. “Or they’ll come in boots they wear for dancing.”

Lest they be branded a dude, they quickly change their city ways.

Mission Viejo resident Bob Crabb found that his new horseback hobby required a new wardrobe, from spurs to hat. When he began taking lessons two years ago from Holman, friends jokingly warned him that if he showed up wearing some rhinestone cowboy get-up, there’d be trouble.

“You’re not wearing Levi’s, right?” a buddy asked.

“All your life you think cowboys wear Levi’s. I found out you were supposed to wear Wranglers,” Crabb says.

He bought the requisite Wranglers, but when he showed up for his next riding lesson, they about laughed him off his horse. The jeans were way too short; when Crabb sat in the saddle, they looked like flood pants. Back to the store. By the time Crabb got it right, he’d bought five or six pairs.

Crabb then compounded his woes by buying the wrong hat.

“I’d bought a straw hat, but it wasn’t the right shape. The crown was too short,” he says.

Friends also informed him that he was sporting his spurs too high on his boot--another fashion faux pas.

“They were like, ‘Hey, I like your ankle spurs.’ ”

To Crabb, getting the wardrobe down pat was worth the repeated trips to Boot Barn:

“It’s all style,” he says. “Otherwise they know you’re a tenderfoot.”

As Crabb discovered, most real cowboys wear Wranglers because they like the fit, and they wear them long--5 or 6 inches more than regular.

Dana Smith, a horse trainer who gives riding lessons at Rancho Sierra Vista in San Juan Capistrano, explains: “They’re called stacked jeans because they stack up on your boots, but when you get on a horse, they fall right down to your feet. You can tell a real cowboy from the drugstore kind by the bottom of their pants. Cowboys buy the longest jeans they can find.”

Some cowboys, especially those from Texas who compete in rodeos, wear their jeans heavily starched and neatly pressed.

“Once you pry your foot through the leg, they’re comfortable,” Smith says.

Another way to tell real cowboys from the urban variety is by their boots.

“When people first show up for riding lessons, they usually have a really pretty boot with a pointed toe that they spent a fortune on to ride in, but they’re absolutely worthless. We wear round-toed ropers,” Smith says. “When you’re riding, that point just gets in the way.”

Roper-style boots have low heels and round toes to slip easily out of the stirrup should one need to make a hasty dismount. That way, if a rider gets thrown, he isn’t dragged around by his feet.

Even the shape of a rider’s hat can tip others off to his city-slicker status. Real cowboys prefer a simple straw or felt cattleman’s-crease hat, with a fairly low 4-inch crown indented on the sides and top and a 4-inch brim.

Jim Crofoot, a western-wear product expert and historian in Lake Forest, says a felt hat can be made from wool or fur. Hats that are 80% to 100% wool cost from $40 to $60, but they quickly lose their shape when wet and can only be reshaped a few times. Fur felt hats, made primarily of rabbit or beaver, start at $100. Fur felt won’t absorb water and can be reshaped repeatedly for many years.

The quality of a fur hat is shown on the sweatband in Xs. XXXX means you have a fur felt with no wool. The X factor goes up to 100X, which costs about $1,000, he says.

Despite the fussy fringed shirts and heavy, metal western belts seen in upscale western clothing stores, most cowboys don’t get gussied up when they’re riding because they’re engaging in hard physical labor.

They usually wear plain Oxford cloth button-down shirts, so save that fancy fringe for line dancing.

“And they don’t wear collars with tips. That’s a dance thing,” says Judy Foster, a saleswoman with Boot Barn in Lake Forest and founder of Las Vaqueras, a women’s riding club. “Real cowboys don’t line dance.”

Belts are usually the most decorative part of the cowboy’s outfit, but they’re pretty plain compared to the kind worn in country western bars.

“There are no conchas, no flash,” Foster says.

Some come with beautifully braided horse hair, tooled leather or beaded straps, but the fanciest part of the belt is the buckle. Cowboys win belt buckles in riding competitions; often the buckles are made of silver and elaborately embellished with a carving of the winner’s exploits.

Wearing one says you’re a real cowboy the way no store-bought buckle can.

Western wear has become so fashionable that it can be found in many chichi boutiques, but both longtime and beginning cowboys usually frequent no-frills stores such as Boot Barn or Thieves Market for authentic apparel such as a Stetson hat or Justin boots.

At Boot Barn, a good pair of ropers starts at about $130, and a Stetson or Resistol hat ranges from $100 to $1,000.

Clothes alone, of course, don’t make the cowboy.

Linda Pine grew up with cowboys, and she can easily tell the real ones from the “wannabes who don’t have any horse sense.” It’s not just their clothes but how they carry themselves in the saddle and handle a horse.

“You can spot them. They come out with their new jeans, new hats, new boots, new shirts. They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I ride horses.’ But they can’t get the damn thing to go,” says Pine, owner of Equestrian Endeavors in San Juan Capistrano, who now gives riding lessons to prepare inexperienced riders for vacations at dude ranches. “We give them a little insight so they have a good time instead of a sore butt.”

For Pine and others, riding a horse is a way to get back to a slower-paced, closer-to-the-land way of life.

“It’s nice to take people back up into the hills,” Pine says. “In Orange County, we’re on the fast track and surrounded by cars. When you’re out riding, you feel a oneness with nature. I love being outdoors and hearing that silence in the morning.”

Locally, there’s an entire subculture that surrounds horseback riding.

“Moms tell me that it’s their sanity. They say, ‘I come here to ride instead of seeing a therapist.’ Some do it instead of going to the gym,” Smith says.

Social lives often revolve around riding.

There are riding clubs for men (Tortugas and Portola Riders) and women (Las Vaqueras) that participate in weekend getaways, parades, barbecues and scout camps.

“It’s just like living in Texas,” Smith says.