“The nurse in I.C.U. she says, ‘Some damn joker called and said the president was calling. We hung up on him.’ They called back and said, ‘This is the Air Force One communication officer. Don’t hang up. President Bush wants to talk to Rocky.’ And then Rick Perry called me and said, ‘Throw that .380 away. I’m going to give you a Sig Sauer .45 for Christmas.’ ”

It’s all there for me in that story, Texas writ small: a man named Rocky who survives a boot-shop shoot-out and whose hospitalization warrants a call from the president and a .45 from the governor. Nobody made boots like Mr. Carroll — he handcrafted them for seven presidents and Pope John Paul II — and nobody embodied Texas eccentricity and individualism like Mr. Carroll.

He knew more about the souls and soles of the rich and the powerful than any lobbyist, podiatrist or priest. He flew on Air Force One. He slept in the governor’s mansion. He took calls from Tony Blair and Peyton Manning. Twenty-seven pairs of the boots he made for former President George H.W. Bush are kept at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station.

And yet, through it all, he remained un-elite, crusty and cursing and toothpick-chomping, working in a disheveled Houston shop across the street from a Jiffy Lube. He was a boot maker’s son who made his first pair of boots when he was 6 years old, and he never really stopped, right up to the end. Mr. Carroll died in his boot shop late last month, sitting on the same recliner where, back in 2014, he told me the story about the donuts and the president and the .45 for Christmas. He was 79.