RLB0414
Gold Member
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2014
- Messages
- 4,725
Good for you Sir. I still say the store bought hat and knife shown, along with a dressed up 1911 qualify as "Sunday go to meetin'" and / or bar-b-que attire.A Tale Of Two Cities.....er Hats
It was the best of times and it was the worse of times...ok enough Dickens.
So what's the worse of times with a new hat? Or even two new hats?
I was riding in a cutting horse competition on Saturday. It was gonna be hot and I needed a new straw hat. My old one was ready for oil change it was pretty used. Lots of miles on it. So I ordered a new hat and it showed on Thursday just in time for the show on Saturday. Only problem........ The box had kinda, (ok no kinda), flat out been caved in.
Well dang, so had the crown of the hat.
In fact pretty darn bad:
We call the company and they had a new experience for us. They sent us a link to a company that insures their shipment. Up loaded a few pics, in fact these very ones and we hear from the insurance co the next day that the claim is approved and they will refund all our money including shipping for the hat. That's cool but I still need a new hat for Saturday. So Friday morning we jump into the pickup truck and head down the hill to Bakersfield. We go to the big box western store and they don't have diddly. Well not true, hundreds of straw hats including the very one I've got all crunched, but not really much that floats my boat and in retrospect I didn't like the one I'd mail ordered as much once I saw it in person. So we head over to the Emporium. It's been a western clothing store in downtown Bakersfield since 1919. While not as huge a stock, yeah they got what I'm looking for and what I need for the horse show the next day. So we gets me a new straw. Well not really cause this one is a palm leaf but well a kissing cousin for sure.
The gal there at the store steamed it a lil for me and got er just right. Next day at the cutting I watched five or six people get their hats blown off while they were competing because of the wind. Well it is Tehachapi, there's a reason we're the epicenter of the wind industry. Anyhoo these hats ended up in the dirt getting run over by a herd of cattle or a horse. None of them survived. Course since I wear a hat all the time my didn't blow off, mostly a city folk thing.
We get our money from the insurance company. We contact the seller to send the crunched hat back and they say don't bother, toss it. So I dunk it in hot water and sit and watch a NBA finals game as I slowly massage this hat back into shape as it dries.. Kinda be a shop hat I guess. Its not perfect but it'll do for a shop hat.
It was the worst of times and it was the best of times. Got two new hats! Better go feed the ponies!
