When I found out that my friend, Doug, did leather work, I was intrigued. It was just a casual mention over lunch right before I retired 18 months ago. Ever since that day, I have wanted to see his shop.

Doug’s craft is not belts. I think I could make belts, and I don’t know anything about leatherwork. Give me a few tools, and I could turn out a belt. Maybe not a pretty belt, but a functional belt.

This is not to say that Doug won’t make a belt. I’m certain he has made many of them. He’s probably made a wallet or two. Maybe a key fob. But Doug’s work is much more interesting than that.

Doug is a saddle maker.

So last Friday, I, along with Marion and a couple of our friends, made the trip south to Whigham, Georgia to see Doug’s shop.

I don’t have all the backstory I need in order to tell this story. Some of the details I have are sketchy. I probably have some of the facts wrong or confused. But I think I have the heart of it in hand. So here goes.

In his former life, before becoming a tree grower in Georgia, Doug was a cattle rancher from Nebraska. He is the only Nebraska rancher I’ve ever known. Possibly the only person from Nebraska I’ve ever known.

Come to find out, Doug spent the first half of his life as a cowboy. The real deal. Cutting yearlings out of the herd. Roping and riding. Training horses. Yippie-ki-yay, and all that.

But the Nebraska winters were rough. Downright cruel.

One winter, he and his wife, Miss Pam, made their way to Tallahassee, Florida to visit one of his aunts. Maybe it was a cousin. Could have been an old Sunday School teacher in a nursing home. This is where my facts get fuzzy.

Anyway, they came, and they really liked the feel of winter in the south. But they didn’t particularly like the crowded feel of the city. On a whim, they looked around to see if there was any land for sale.

They were thinking, “Why not! We might want to move here one of these days.”

The idea worked out. They bought some farmland not far from Tallahassee, over in Grady County, Georgia. Maybe a few hundred acres. Room to spread out.

“This might be a nice place one day to raise and train horses,” Doug said.

Next thing you know, Doug and Pam, the cattle ranchers are loading up and headed to the gnat-infested flatlands of South Georgia. They built a house. A barn. Two training rings. And they brought with them a whole boat load of leather goods.

As a horseman and rancher, Doug broke a lot of gear. Something always needed fixing.

“I had a bridle come apart on me one time. I didn’t know much about fixing it, but we fixed most everything ourselves anyway, so I gave it a go. Turned out pretty good.”

Next thing Doug knew, other cowboys brought stuff to him for fixing. Bridles. Chaps. Holsters. It didn’t matter what it was, if it was made of leather, Doug could put it back together. But he liked the saddles best of all.

“When I got a nice saddle,” Doug says, “I’d take it apart to figure out how it was put together.”

His shop is his man cave. Made to look like an old barn, behind the locked door is a small room made of pine walls and ceiling. Leather goods hanging on the walls surrounded by mounted deer heads. One mounted turkey in mid-flight. Two nice leather chairs.

“One is for the Misses,” he says with a chuckle.

A huge wooden desk sits against the wall just left of the door. The drawers are full of the leather patterns he uses. The center of the desk is made of marble to withstand the pounding of his four rawhide mallets. Against the wall on the back of the desk is a rack holding what looks like a hundred stainless steel punches that make the intricate designs.

“A lot of people think I carve the designs into the leather, but I don’t remove any leather when I’m making a piece. The stamps simply push the leather around. And you gotta be careful because the work can actually change the thickness or the size of the piece you’re working on.”

“Let me show you a nice holster.”

Doug opens a cabinet drawer. He’s digging around. I can see what looks like several dozen belt buckles. The big ones, like the rodeo heroes wear.

“That’s a lot of belt buckles.” I’m wide-eyed.

“Yeah. Buckles are a young man’s game.”

He doesn’t show them off. He doesn’t tell me anything about them. But in my mind, I know he earned them. These didn’t come from a souvenir shop.

“Here’s me back in the day.”

Doug pulls something from the drawer and hands me a framed magazine cover. The photo is classic. Doug is just past his mid-seventies now. The picture on the cover shows a late-thirty-something Doug standing beside another cow poke. Dirty cowboy hats tilted back. Work-worn chaps. A lasso held by his side, which I figure may have had something to do with all those buckles in his drawer.

There are not many saddle makers left these days. Doug says that the best ones are either out in Texas or Montana. No surprise there. There are so few of them that they all know each other. Including this one guy from Georgia.

Doug recently sold the last finished saddle he had.

“I’ve only got two good saddle trees left. I can’t make up my mind if I want to make two more or just call it quits now. Making a saddle is hard on my hands.”

A saddle tree is the wooden base around which a saddle is formed. It gives the leather its shape and gives the craftsman something to which he can attach the leather. A thick golden coat of shellac covers and seals the wood.

“I don’t care how good a saddle maker you are,” Doug says, “if the tree ain’t right the saddle will never be right.”

Doug worked with a horse at one time that was hard to handle. The owner thought he was high spirited. He needed a good trainer. It didn’t take Doug long to assess the situation.

“What he needs is a good saddle that fits him.”

Evidently, a bad saddle is like wearing a pair of shoes that hurts your feet.

“You’d be kicking and complaining, too,” says Doug.

He showed us the cut-out patterns and hardware he uses. Doug is old-school. He likes the old ways. Even his machines are old but durable.

In case you’re wondering, a plain-Jane saddle cost about the same as a vacation cruise in the Bahamas. A well-crafted saddle with all the bling, you might as well buy your own island in the Bahamas.

I’m telling you all of this because Doug is a dying breed. His craft is an art that may not survive.

I count myself blessed to know him.