while in the fort worth stockyards this past week the motorhome boys decided to do some window shopping for new felt hats… they made all the specialty men’s stores… looking at silver bellies with four inch brims…
for those unfamiliar with the grading system on quality felts , the more X’s the higher the quality…. three X , ten X, and so forth….
two shirts had settled on a thirty X beaver.. silver belly- three and a half inch brim…. 1,700.00.. it’s not cheap but it’s reasonable… the graham banker picked one of equal quality… ed down-sized a little , but not much..!!
then came chippers time to spring…. he was looking on the lower shelves….. had to bend over just to get a glimpse of the democratic head-gear there on the bottom shelf… he shopped for thirty minutes before finding a dust covered box under several other boxes, on the bottom shelf , against the back wall…
he drug the dusty box out into the light… looked over the contents… then proudly announced ” this is the one for me”..
it was a two-X brown belly possum… vintage 1974…mooch fenotee crease…. marked for clearance…. forty dollars plus tax….size seven and seven-eighths…with a five inch brim… he tried it on.. looked like a short version of charley daniels , but it was new to him !
he pulled out a roll like uncle tony, peeled off two twentys and paid for the wild-west umbrella with cash… typical chipper fashion…. throwed his old windmill cap in the trash as he walked out on the side-walk… proud as a peacock… looking like hoss cartwright standing in a ditch….
he could cut a two inch hole in the side of that stove pipe and provide a nesting place for the endangered spotted-owl……. owl hoot or hoot gibson , what was he thinking ?
