“I’m going to call him,” Mr. Carroll said.

He reached for his iPhone.

“Perry, Perry, Governor Perry,” he mumbled as he scrolled through his phone. “Maybe it’s under Rick.”

Image Rocky Carroll, who has made boots for presidents including George W. Bush, called the governor’s office to try to change his mind. Credit... Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Moments later, Mr. Carroll was on the phone with Mr. Perry’s office in Austin. “Yeah,” he said, “this is Rocky Carroll at the boot shop in Houston. I make the governor’s boots all the time. Will you have him call me?”

Mr. Perry might be getting other calls on this one.

Texas, as newcomers quickly discover, is very much as advertised: The myths and stereotypes are true, and proudly so. Grandmothers really do drive four-wheel-drive trucks. Lawmakers do wear concealed handguns on the floor of the Texas Senate. In some counties, the cattle population exceeds the human one. And millions of people wear cowboy boots.

Doctors perform surgeries in them. Judges issue rulings in them. Men and women get married in them. Governors, both Democratic and Republican, govern in them. In one spot that has become a minor tourist attraction, Jesus Christ wears them: There is a spurless boot peeking out from under his robe on a graveyard statue in Paris, Tex.

A spokesman said the elder President George Bush, who lives in Houston, had roughly 25 pairs of Mr. Carroll’s boots. Sid Miller, 58, a former state lawmaker who is running for agriculture commissioner and was preparing to compete this Saturday in a calf-roping contest in Stamford, Tex., said he had about 30 pairs of boots, though none by Mr. Carroll, and one pair of dress shoes “in the closet somewhere, but I haven’t worn them in 30 years.”