Osprey
Ultra Nomad
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Registered: 5-23-2004
Location: Baja Ca. Sur
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Bad hat
Bad Hat
In the desert southwest hats are not just for cowboys. Not very many cowboys left anyway but if you’re gonna play outdoors around the Great Basin,
you’re gonna need a hat. Not just any old hat, not just to keep the sun off your bald spot or lend you some fabled panache while wading a stream,
flingin’ the fly.
My special hat needs were borne of hunting and fishing in rough and ready country usually untrammeled and untouched as I sought out solitude and
heritage trout in the lost and lonely canyons of Arizona, Nevada and south central Utah.
Most of the time was spent in open Jeeps or pickups. In my Jeeps I had the design need to have something to keep the hat from blowing off – don’t care
much for stampede straps so I settled for a heavy hatband. I found the perfect combination for my travel mode in a cheap but durable pressed felt
fedora to which I added a three strand wrap of rusty barbed wire.
Once I got the hat broke in it suited me and my needs quite well. The breakin wasn’t easy. Since I already had that grizzled Willie Nelson look about
me the hat needed to be, to look, well worn and tested; anything but new.
The process was casual but effective; to get the look I began by drinking from the hat --- beer, wine, muddy water began to change the color, the
texture, the shape of the thing. The original felt dye leached through it after the first drenching and covered my head, neck and face with a purple
brown Dibble that looked like tainted blood.
Camped solo up near Koosharem reservoir one balmy evening just at dusk I wasted a half a box of 22 shells throwing the thing in the air and shooting
from the hip with my trusty Colt revolver. I saw it jump twice so I quit but in the morning I found that the heavy felt healed right over the small
holes as though I had dreamed the whole thing up.
The inspection showed an inexplicable ragged crescent was missing from the brim as though somebody or something had taken a bite out of it. The next
day’s end found me standing at the bar at a little Indian joint in Caliente, Nevada where I stood there grinding my boots into the thing at my feet
while having a few shooters with the locals. A real cowboy type sidled up, pushed me gently aside, picked up the hat and sat it on the bar.
He said “You don’t treat a hat thata way.”
I put on the hat, pointed the bartender to the cowboy’s glass and gave the slightest smile as a tacit point of agreement. The hat was finished. The
circle was complete.
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Skipjack Joe
Elite Nomad
Posts: 8084
Registered: 7-12-2004
Location: Bahia Asuncion
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Nice mess of brookies.
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Maron
Nomad
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Did "The Duke" appreciate the drink?
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Udo
Elite Nomad
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Location: Black Hills, SD/Ensenada/San Felipe
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Mood: TEQUILA!
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Great story, Jorge!
I also had a really weather-worn hat that had a similar treatment, but it burned up in the house fire a few years ago.
Udo
Youth is wasted on the young!
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Osprey
Ultra Nomad
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Location: Baja Ca. Sur
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Maron, not the "Duke" -- think Mongo, Blazing Saddles
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DanO
Super Nomad
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Registered: 8-26-2003
Location: Not far from the Pacific
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Mongo's hat did have that beat up look like yours, George.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwNJla8WvoY
\"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.\" -- Frank Zappa
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pauldavidmena
Super Nomad
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Registered: 5-23-2013
Location: Centerville, MA, USA
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"Mongo only pawn in game of life".
[Edited on 5-4-2015 by pauldavidmena]
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sancho
Ultra Nomad
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Registered: 10-6-2004
Location: OC So Cal
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Back in the surfing days, 70's, one's hair was so thick. you
never thaught of a hat for sun, the only guys who used sunscreen, zinc oxide, were lifeguards. Now it's at least a
cap, and sunscreen 100
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durrelllrobert
Elite Nomad
Posts: 7393
Registered: 11-22-2007
Location: Punta Banda BC
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Mood: thriving in Baja
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Our Prez has one too
Bob Durrell
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bajabuddha
Banned
Posts: 4024
Registered: 4-12-2013
Location: Baja New Mexico
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Mood: Always cranky unless medicated
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ha,ha. that's funny. thanks for ruining a potentially great thread.
I don't have a BUCKET LIST, but I do have a F***- IT LIST a mile long!
86 - 45*
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