A little off the top, a history of hats

The cowboy hat collection of Joe Southern, 
including the brown leather, black felt, 
custom Lone Ranger, and new white felt hat.

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m all hat and no cattle.

There were cattle in my childhood (OK, just a couple of milk cows), but that was before the hats. We had a hobby farm for several years on our acre lot in Niwot, Colorado. I guess in some small way that was part of the allure of being a cowboy. Mostly I have to give credit to The Lone Ranger.

As long as I can remember, the masked man was one of my favorite heroes. I always wanted to have a cowboy hat like his. I think that’s part of the reason why I wanted to be a forest ranger when I grew up; they got to wear cool cowboy-ish hats. Back in the ’70s, the only cowboy hats I had were the straw ones that doubled as Easter baskets from Kmart. They fell apart about as fast as the candy got consumed.

Then that fateful moment happened, probably around 1975-76, when I found a leather hat at a garage sale for 50 cents. It was brown leather with a stitched-on crown and a flat, wide brim. I believe it was someone’s old Tandy Leather kit, but I didn’t care. I put a big ol’ feather hatband on it and wore it like I was Burt Reynolds in “Smokey and the Bandit.” Feather hatbands came and went, but the lid stayed with me. My mom called it my “Joe hat.”

By the time I got to high school in 1981, I was too cool for the hat, but not really. For four summers in the 1980s I worked at the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch. Three of those summers I was the mountain man, teaching wilderness survival and Indian lore to Boy Scouts. The hat was part of my daily attire. And then I grew up, got married and lost track of the hat for several years.

Flash forward to 1994 and I’m a new father living in North Carolina heavily under the influence of Garth Brooks. After covering one of his concerts, I went out and got me a black felt cowboy hat. It was sweet and I was so proud. That hat has been with me ever since. It’s become a trademark of sorts.

Although it wasn’t white like the Lone Ranger’s, it did have the teardrop crown like his. That was important to me. After years of being rode hard and put up wet, it has lost its shape and color. The last two hat shops I took it to said the felt was too worn to be shaped again. The hat is more of a brownish-black color now and the hatband it came with is long gone.

I almost always wear the hat on weekends, especially when I’m volunteering at Brazos Bend State Park or on the sidelines photographing football and baseball games. There are a lot of people who recognize me as the cowboy photographer at Houston Texans, Houston Astros, and Sugar Land Skeeters (now Space Cowboys) games.

In the early 2000s, I owned the Lone Ranger Fan Club and published a quarterly newsletter. Howard Peretti, one of my faithful companions, felt I should have a quality Lone Ranger costume and he paid for me to get properly outfitted. That outfit included a very expensive custom made hat. Finally, after all these years, I had a real Lone Ranger cowboy hat. Except ordering it online was a mistake.

Not knowing what sizes and dimensions to order, I wound up with a monstrosity with a crown too tall and a brim too wide. It works with my costume, but not as daily headwear. It now stays boxed up on a closet shelf.

In 2014 I began following Texas Revolution re-enactors from event to event, taking pictures and conducting interviews for a book I am still working on. In 2018 I joined their ranks. In piecing together my outfit, I rediscovered my old leather hat. Although it’s not exactly period correct, it’s the closest thing I have and I’ve been wearing it to each re-enactment since.

On March 2, my wife Sandy and I went to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Naturally, I wore my black felt cowboy hat there. I left carrying it in a plastic bag. I found a booth selling hats and finally got a white one that I had shaped with a teardrop crown. After all these many years, I now have a Lone Ranger style hat that I can wear on a regular basis. It fits better and looks cooler than any cowboy hat I’ve had before.

I doubt I’ll ever get rid of my old back hat, but I have a feeling I’m in for a long relationship with this new one. I’m very happy with my hat collection and wouldn’t trade any of them for all the cattle in the world. I’m content to be all hat and no cattle.

(Joe Southern is the managing editor of the Wharton Journal-Spectator and East Bernard Express. He can be reached at news@journal-spectator.com.)