It’s not
enough to walk cowboy and talk cowboy.
You also gotta dress cowboy. I found
this out for myself during my stint as a
writer in Hollywood. There were some
mandatory things that went into an
outfit to make you look like an
authentic shootin’ citizen of the
American West. One of the most
important, of course, was your hat.
Your hat kind of became part of your
personality. You all remember how Gene
Autry would always tip his hat when he
passed a lady on the street. Or how Roy
Rogers could get into one of those rock-em
sock-em fights on the top of the
stagecoach and then fall into the
sagebrush with the bad guy - and never
lose his hat.
The most famous western hat was designed
and produced by a man named John B.
Stetson. He created his famous hat,
called “The Boss of the Plains” while he
was sitting around a campfire on a cold
Colorado prairie. Believe it or not,
when John wore his first hat around the
mining camps, most of the grizzly old
fellows there would laugh at him and
tell him that this big, wide-brimmed,
high-ridin’ thing on his head would
never catch on.
And it might never have become the
standard of cowboy head gear, except for
a big burly fella who rode into one of
those mining camps and liked what John
was wearing. He bought it off of him
right then and there for five dollars.
They have an expression down on the
ranch that says, “It don’t take long to
examine a hot horseshoe.” Well, it
didn’t take too long for other cowboys
to realize that this was not only kind
of a dashing-looking hat but it was very
functional for the weather and the dirty
jobs they had to do. And of course
nobody was about to tease that big tough
hombre who was wearing the
different-looking hat.
John Stetson’s hat caught on and he had
to go and build a factory just to handle
all the orders that started coming in.
That factory is still around today and
continues to make the famous hat that
identifies folks as a real Westerners.
I’ve had the pleasure of wearing a
Stetson on occasion and so did a few of
my friends, like Dale Robertson, Gene
Autry and Roy Rogers. Not to mention, I
live in Oklahoma where wearing a western
hat is always in style.
It’s a fine hat! Even if you had a
tussle with an ornery young bronc in the
morning, you can just dust it off and
bend the brim a little and it became
your Sunday-go-to-meeting hat. A Stetson
hat said, “The West.” It branded you as
a working cowboy, not one of these
dandified dudes from back east who would
wear the funny-looking little round top
jobbies.
So I don’t want you cowboys and cowgirls
listening out there to take this too
hard now, cause I have to tell you, It’s
a Little Known Fact that John Stetson’s
hats are now - and always have been -
made in Philadelphia! |
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