The Brown Cowboy Hat

When I was a kid, maybe around 11 or 12, my friends and I decided to start showing our horses in some local horse shows around town. We started working with our horses every day, week after week, month after month in preparation. We didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but we thought we had a pretty good idea. We didn’t have the kinds of families that could spring for a good horse trainer or riding lessons. To be honest, I don’t think I even realized that people did that! Nope, our poor horses had just us kids and our dreams of grandeur...and Western Horseman magazines. What else did we need?

We worked tirelessly with our horses; getting them to jog and lope nice and slow, as opposed to the racing around we usually did with them. We asked them to carry themselves a certain way using our amazing horsemanship skills, then pleading with them when that didn’t work, finally reverting to gadgets, tie downs and force. Maybe a stick now and then to help get them get in line (please don’t call PETA, I think the statute of limitations is up anyway). We practiced all of the maneuvers we thought the judges would want to see; stop, turn, back up, transitions, etc. We even perfected the gymnastic art of vaulting ourselves up on to their backs by running up behind them and launching ourselves over their rumps (we knew it probably wouldn’t be required, but we were kids and it broke up the monotony.) Our horses were saints!

We looked at pictures, read books like National Velvet and The Black Stallion, poured over Western Horseman magazines, and figured it all out. We were horse trainers!

Finally, the day of the big show arrived. My friends were boarding at another stable so the plan was to meet at the show barn, each of us riding over from our respective boarding facilities. I showed up at the stable the morning of the show to tack up and head out, but the tack room was locked and the gal who ran the place was nowhere to be seen (she was probably in bed, I may have failed to mention to her I would be coming at 6am). I knocked and knocked on the door of the house, but she wouldn’t wake up. In a panic, I ran to the stable next door (Fremont was full of boarding stables when I was a kid, believe it or not!) and the couple who owned it let me borrow some of their tack.

Off we trotted down the road! When our class was called, I entered the arena, heart pounding, hands shaking. It was do or die time! After a few times around the arena I heard my name called. Apparently, they had been calling for me to come to the center of the arena for several seconds, but I couldn’t hear over the pounding of my heart. One of my friends’ parents had to lean over the arena wall to whisper to me as I passed by. I went to the center of the arena to meet with the judge. With the over abundant confidence that only a child or an idiot would have, along with the intense pride in my horse, I thought maybe they were going to tell me that I was being advanced to the “Intermediate” class. Maybe my horse was actually “too good” for the beginner class!

Sadly, that was not the case. The judge informed me that I would have to be disqualified because I didn’t have a hat. Or a western shirt, or a bridle, or anything else I needed for that matter. I cringe in embarrassment just thinking about it. Yes, I was that kid. I thought I was ok. I was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a horse on it. I just had no idea. I was also riding in a hackamore (remember, I couldn’t get into the tack room so I just grabbed what the neighbor handed me). I hope I was at least wearing boots, but it’s sort of doubtful judging by all the pictures of me riding in tennis shoes or barefoot. I just didn’t know better.

Luckily, a friend's mother took charge (my friend was riding in the advanced classes later on). She ran over and made her daughter hand over her hat, shirt, and bridle (and maybe boots). I say “made” because my friend wasn’t thrilled about it. But her mom would have none of her sass and practically hissed “take them off now!”  We did a quick presto-chango and I was back in the arena. The judges held the class for me which, looking back, I think is so incredibly nice. I would have been crushed if I had missed it. We ended up with a few ribbons that day. I’m not sure if we won blue, but I remember we did pretty well, all things considered. I was proud of my horse, and luckily too young and excited about our ribbons to be overly mortified by my naivete. Yet, it was a very good lesson.

My Grandpa Frank was one of my biggest fans and supporters when it came to my horse.  He called me “Tex” and let me read all of his Louis Lamoure books when I would visit them at the lake.  He was pretty certain that I would make a great cowboy girl one day. I remember the day that I received the news that Mandy, the horse of my dreams (and the horse from the story above), was being given to me. It was one of the best and worst days of my life. I was so excited! But it also meant that I would have to sell my first pony. I hung back in the stairwell crying that morning, unable to come down to the kitchen and face people, ashamed that I was being given such an amazing gift and feeling so heartbroken at the same time. Grandpa Frank called me in, sat me down and gave me the kindest talk an old man could ever give a heart-broken little girl. He was very understanding of my heartbreak. But he spoke to me "cowboy to cowboy"-  very seriously.  I remember feeling much better after our talk, though I don’t remember exactly what he said. It was my Grandpa Frank who gave me my very first cowboy hat the Christmas after the horse show debacle.  This is me, Christmas morning, trying on my very own, very real,  and very large cowboy hat!

 

A few years ago my mom asked me if I wanted to keep the hat or if she could get rid of it. Since I thought I had “hung up my spurs for good” after Mandy died at the ripe old age of 36, I told her to go ahead and sell it or give it away. In hindsight, I wish I had hung on to that hat. It might actually fit now!

Every time I put a cowboy hat on today, I still feel a little bit like that goofy kid who didn’t know anything but didn’t know any better. The kid who was so blinded by passion and pony-love, that her attire at a horse show was of no consequence, it was secondary to the excitement of the day and the performance of her horse. I’m just playing dress up now, wanting to ride my horse and do all the right things, but knowing now, that I really know nothing. The lesson in this is that it might be good to reconnect with some of the confidence I had as a kid, but tempered with the humility and common sense you grow into as an adult. I’m starting to feel a little more comfortable in the hat, and hoping the rest will come in time. But God forbid I ever have the confidence I had as a child! I think I’d rather not. And so does my horse, I'm sure.