GATESVILLE - A lot of people, even in a state like Texas, can go long periods of time without thinking about spurs, not that there aren't a lot of reminders.

Sports fans here can root for the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. People in the Panhandle are familiar with the town of Spur, in Dickens County, and they have heard stories of the old Spur Ranch that gave the town its name.

Others are spurred to action by one thing or another, and someone who has earned a certain degree of recognition is said to have earned his spurs.

That term, which may be associated with the era of the cowboy, actually goes back to the spurs beginning, during the Roman Empire, when spurs were a mark of rank. For those Romans, the earning of spurs was no mere phrase.

In America, spurs became an essential part of the cowboy's working life. For the uninitiated, spurs consist of a spiked rowel attached to a metal heel band. Accessories such as 'jingle bobs' make the spurs 'jingle jangle jingle,' as the old cowboy song would have it.

But that misses the point. Spurs were not made to jingle jangle jingle but were de signed to communicate to a horse the rider's desire to 'gid dy up' or, with more spurring, to run hell-bent for leather.

The Spanish showed up in North America with huge gaudy spurs with rowels that measured six to eight inches around. Modified in America, the smaller spurs proved to be less cumbersome, not to mention easier on the horses.

In America, spurs took on regional differences. In northern climes, where chaps were the order of the day, spurs often came with chap guards. What's known as the 'Texas spur' is usually built as a single piece and is rarely seen a with a chap guard. There is a California type spur, but it's been noted that John Wayne usually wore Texas spurs in his movies.

For anyone wanting to know more about spurs, or to see just about every kind of spur ever made, a trip to the Coryell Museum and Historical Center in Gatesville, home of the Lloyd and Madge Mitchell Collection, is in order.

The Mitchell collection consists of several thousand spurs and if it's not the biggest collection in the world, no one has found a bigger one. Because of it, Gatesville is known, by legislative decree in 2001 no less, as the 'Spur Capital of Texas.'

The collection was the passion of Lloyd Mitchell, who coached football, baseball, track, tennis and baseball at Gatesville High School in the 1940s and 50s. He left coaching but continued to teach, and he continued a lifelong passion for collecting spurs.

Mitchell said he began collecting spurs when he found one spur on a ranch in Wyoming and started looking for its match. It's not recorded whether or not he found it but he found about 10,000 spurs from all over the world and all walks of life.

That includes spurs from Spain, France, Morocco, the Philippines, Europe, South America, and from the famous (Jacqueline Kennedy) and the infamous (Pancho Villa.)

Maybe you don't spend a lot of time thinking about spurs, but after a trip to the Coryell Museum to see Mitchell's collection, you won't think about them the same way again.