About twenty years ago, I was hauling an old, decrepit Silver Streak trailer across Southern Texas to deliver to a couple I knew near Gallup, New Mexico. I got it for next to nothing which, considering it had sat abandoned behind a barn for three decades, was a pretty fair price. The problem is that it needed a lot of care to make it to western New Mexico. And, in the brutal heat of West Texas in midsummer, I was obliged get out every couple hundred miles and attempt to fix one thing or another.
I’m sure I had a baseball or gimmecap of some kind, but I what ever I was wearing just didn’t cut it. My brains were getting fried. I needed protection. Stat.
I don’t remember the name of the town, but it was just a spec on the US/Mexico border. I went into a dry goods store. I remember being amused by that. I don’t think I’d actually ever been in a store that actually advertised itself as ‘dry goods.’ It looked like it had been faithfully serving its clientele since the days of the Texas Republic.
When I told the ancient, laconic, but friendly, clerk that I needed headgear, he nodded and sized up my melon. He used a pole to fish down a pile of straw cowboy hats. I was of two minds about that pile of hats. Though I lived in Northern New Mexico and owned a pretty high quality, black felt Stetson, I only wore it on special occasions.It really wasn’t my jam…style wise. Sure, I owned a couple decent pair of cowboy boots (one was actually custom…and shockingly expensive) and even wore them around New York when I went back there to work for a while. Still, I was careful to maintain a boundary when it came to a full Western rig. No Wrangler cowboy cut jeans or pearl snap shirts. I grew up on the West Coast, not the Red River. I am no exurban cowboy. I like horses well enough, but prefer Mustangs. Like the '68 GT fastback. As musician Dan Hicks once sang, “I never roped a cow cause I don’t know how/and I sure ain’t fixin’ to learn how now…”
The dry goods clerk strongly advised returning outside without wearing the hat he'd chosen for me. To emphasize the point, he dropped my dirty gimmiecap in a trash can. I relented. I recall paying about $35-40 for the hat. It was a Resistol. Made in Garland, Texas. The classic cattleman style. 4 3/8” crown, 4” brim. Simple, off white, nothing fancy. It was stiff and far from comfortable. I complained to the clerk and he assured me that if I sweated through it for a few years, it’d fit just fine.
He was right. It fit like a glove. After about 6-8 years of wearing it while working around my property in all weathers. And though I never pretended to be a former bronc buster, it got to the point where I didn’t much like going anywhere that involved sun without wearing it. I even took it with me to Hawaii a couple times. No one there batted an eye. I wore it to work in the yard. I wore it to do carpentry. I wore it on dates. I wore it fishing. I definitely wore it when I went to the local bar. I took it off when I went to someone’s house or a nice restaurant. I took it off when I went into my own house. Sometimes. Best damn hat I ever owned.
A few years ago, I wore it while producing a fashion shoot in the high desert near Joshua Tree. An unscrupulous, unprincipled Swedish photographer from Dallas asked to wear it while shooting under the sun. If he hadn’t been turning beet red, I would’ve said no. Never ask to borrow another man or woman’s hat. It’s not right.
I never saw it again…except for occasional IG posts by the photographer where he sports it on various assignments. I don’t particularly blame him. He nabbed it right at its peak.
A classic Resistol isn’t $35 anymore. They run more like $200…when they’re not sold out. I plan to get another. Sure, it’ll take me a few years to get it just right. But then, I’ll be protected for life.
