June 25, 2007 Bonus Bonus Blog
I spent quite a bit of time on the trip looking at historic photos of cowboys. I bought a book, "Albuquerque: Then And Now" at the Albuquerque Museum, which had some exquisite images from the 1800s, including a parade in downtown Albuquerque prior to 1912 and there is a long line of cowboys riding in a row and every single one of them has a flat-brimmed hat on. There are spectators along the street with semi-winged hats, but they are townsmen types.

But, with that said, it's time for:

Confessions of A Hat Nazi, Part III
Dan Buck sent me a photo of farmhands from the 1870s. Now, granted, they are not technically "cowboys" but take a gander at these lids!



This just proves to me that we have become wayyyyyy too strident on what is historically correct headgear. Anybody showing up at a gunfight re-enactor competition would be laughed out of town wearing something like this (never mind being gigged to death for being so goofy). We need to lighten up fellow Hat Nazis. The bottom line is this: they had almost every kind of headgear imagineable, with the possible exception of the surgical tubing beer cap with the cans on each side.

"If everybody is wearing a big hat, ain't nobody wearin' a big hat."
—BBB