Those who know me well know I love to wear hats.  Ball caps, that is.  I have an old photograph of me in a cowboy hat when I was about 3 years old.  But aside from then, I can’t ever remember liking them or wanting to wear one.

“When in Rome,” as they say.  Brent, Carl, and I were checking out a western store that sold not only clothing, but bridles, saddles, and all kinds of cool stuff.  The real deals.  So we more or less dared each other to all get a cowboy hat.  A dare or challenge is all 3 guys need, as we all know too well!

The hidden story for me is that this took me back to my childhood.  Not so much the aforementioned kid in a hat, but back to my dad.  “Daddy Gene” loved horses all his life.  I cannot remember a day during my lifetime that he did not have at least 1-2 horses on hand.  His small shed out back behind our rural TN home smelled of leather from the saddle hanging on the wall.  There were a couple of bridles beside it, as well as a set of spurs.  I didn’t care much about the horses then.  I took them for granted because they were always there.  What I loved was not the horses themselves, but the Thursday afternoons I spent with dad after school.  Thursdays were his day off.  He would pick me up at 3 o’clock, and inevitably, we would “piddle” with the horses which meant caring for them, mending a fence, riding them, or plowing the garden with one.  There were plenty of tractors and automation around for working in the garden, but he adored the manual labor of walking behind an old plow or riding an old sled.

So the western store brought back lots of memories with its horse tack.  It seemed fitting to wear a cowboy hat for a day while in WY.  It was also a means of reminiscing my dad’s love for horses.  By the way, I don’t think I ever saw my dad wear a cowboy hat, but the store didn’t have any horses for sale.  🙂

Brent (aka "Hoss"), Carl (aka "Festus"), and Mark (aka "John Wayne!")

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