In what sounds like an old joke, two guys walked into an El Paso bar one night. One had a boot business and the other had a 1953 Cadillac Hearse. But our story actually starts long before that.
“Marty and I like vintage everything,” says Nevena Christi. Nevena is the self-proclaimed “Boss lady” of Rocketbuster Handmade Custom Boots.
Her husband, Marty Snortum, was a Virginia-born commercial photographer who had moved to El Paso because he loved the desert southwest. Marty was also infatuated with the quality and design of vintage American manufacturing. His eclectic collection included vintage cars, jukeboxes, ray guns and cowboy boots. El Paso was known as the “Boot Capital of America” and many venerable old boot brands straddled the river. Frequently, he was called on to do shoots for boot companies. Colorful vintage boots were often used as props for the covers of catalogues. In the back of his mind, Marty wondered why the retro styles of the Thirties and Forties weren’t being made anymore.
One cool December night in 1989, Marty walked into a bar in El Paso, and engaged in some tequila drinking with a German-born entrepreneur who owned a boot business. The boot man admired Marty’s Cadillac that was parked outside. Sometime during the night, a deal was struck and Marty woke up the next morning
