A Lesson in Cowboy Hats

You’ll ride a black tornado ‘cross the western sky,

Rope an ol’ blue northern, and milk it till it’s dry,

Bulldog the Mississippi and pin its ears down flat,

Long before you take this cowboy’s hat

-Chris Ledoux

“I just recently started selling Luke’s old sweat-ringed cowboy hats to tourists.  I could barely believe it when they paid $50 for a hat he’d worn for several summers and had sweated through all around the band.”  The antique shop owner said as I picked up an old hat in her shop.  “Then I talked to Sharon down at Teton Hats and she told me she’s sold used hats with sweat rings for as much as $300!”  I could barely believe it either, but apparently tourists are picking up on what most Montanans have known (sub-consciously or consciously)for a long time: the hat says it all.  People in Montana speak volumes by the hat they wear.   To the outsider, it might look like every small town in Montana is full of cowboys because of the hats, but the reality is much more subtle. 

The first distinction, which apparently the tourists buying hats with sweat rings have picked up on, is the difference between a local Montana hat and one from out of town.  The key here is the newness factor.  The only time when this test may not work is during a rodeo, county fair or wedding when the locals will crack out and dust off their best cowboy hat.  But on your average day in Montana, only the non-Montanans wear new looking hats.

The second distinction is the shaping factor.  I don’t mean what shape (we’ll get to that in a minute).  I mean is it shaped at all?  If a hat looks like its owner kicks it down the street through the mud and then pulls the brim down in front like he’s trying to keep it on through a tornado, chances are it’s shaped by circumstances and not intentionally.  People who don’t intentionally shape their hats typically don’t have time for style or don’t care.  They’re wearing a hat to keep the sun of out of their eyes. They’re wearing a hat to keep the rain off their face.  They’re wearing a hat because Cenex threw it in as a “thank-you” for buying 50 roles of bailing twine.  They’re wearing a hat like that because they’re a farmer.

The third difference is the shape of the brim.  A round, basically flat brim signifies a buckaroo.  The best way to define a buckaroo is to describe one of Stan Lynn’s famous cartoon scenes.  In the scene, a cowboy is leaning way off the side of his horse with a pair of post-hole diggers trying to dig a post-hole while his partner on the ground looks on in confusion.  True Buckaroos would rather ride horses…always (even to the point of performing poorly at other tasks so they can be sent back to riding horses).  They care a great deal about their appearance, and for some reason usually prefer large, round flat-brimmed cowboy hats. 

The only shape we’ve left with then is the classic, modern, cowboy hat: brim dipped slightly down in front with a shallow swell on the sides by the ears and the edge tipping up around the sides to the back.  The crown usually has slots on top so you can easily grab and position it with the thumb, index and middle finger.  But even with this classic shape, you might not be looking at a bon-a-fide Montana cowboy.   You’ll have to look at everything else he’s wearing to determine whether he’s a tourist who paid $50 for an authentic hat, a rodeo cowboy who was recently bucked off on his head or a real (ranches-for-a-living) Montana cowboy.  The key elements to look for next would be: skoal can ring, brand of jeans, belt buckle authenticity and visible knife, Leatherman or lack thereof.    But that is a little advanced for the purposes of this blog.  For now, hopefully you learned something about what a hat can say in Montana.