Why I Have a Cowboy Hat Like Fiona Wanstall’s

Here’s a description of the class in the 2012 Cowboy Poetry program. However, it doesn’t mention that Roy’s business partner, Bernice Coombs, also a master hatter, would be coming up from Queensland, Australia to help out. She told us, “Everyone back home calls me ‘Ben.’”

Hat Making with Roy Jackson: Traditional vs. Contemporary
Monday, January 30 – Wednesday, February 1 9:00 am – 5:00 pm $425

Back by popular demand! Learn the art and craft of hat making using methods that have changed little since the mid to late 1800s. This three-day workshop will introduce you to hat making without machines. You will build your own hat using just a few simple tools and techniques. The differences between traditional and contemporary hat making will be discussed during each phase of the class. Participants will learn dry blocking and wet blocking, choosing the correct block, pouncing and finishing the 100% beaver felt. Hats will then be sized, trimmed and ready to wear. Master Hatter Roy Jackson has been building quality hats for 15 years. His business, Jaxonbilt Hat Co., is in Salmon, Idaho.

Here’s a picture of the hat I made:

Why did I end up with this hat?

Three reasons: I was interested in learning to make a hat, not to wear one, but I had no idea how intimidating the hat-making process would be. I was coming down with a cold. I thought that Ben, a master hat maker, would be better at choosing a style for me than I would for myself.

I do not remember my grandmother, who was, according to my mother, a clever woman who could fashion a hat. When I looked through the workshops at the 2012 Cowboy Poetry Gathering—Rawhide Hobble Braiding, Leather Carving, and even Blogging—it was Roy Jackson’s hat-making class that caught my fancy. Perhaps I was thinking of my hat-making grandmother. Who knows. I do know that when I mentioned to women friends I was taking a class to learn how to make a cowboy hat, several responded enthusiastically, especially Nicole, a glamorous acquaintance, who said, “I would love to learn to make a hat!” and then forwarded me a link to her favorite British milliner, Philip Treacy http://www.philiptreacy.co.uk/

All the years my dad was in the ranching business, he wore a light gray, grease-stained Stetson. “He was very particular about his hats,” mother said, alluding to the fact that he went bald in his twenties and to the shape of his head. “He had a double-wide oval head,” she said. I think she meant that was his hat size. After taking the class, I recognized the style Dad wore, listed in Jaxonbilt Hat Company as an Open Road—a 2 ¾ brim with a punch-front crease called a “cattleman’s crown.” http://www.jaxonbilthats.com/hatshop.html


That first day I was overwhelmed by the hat-making lingo, the tools, and the process—the right steps in the right order. My notes went something like this:

You have the basic hat shell of 100% beaver felt. That has a name. You are handed your block. You put your rough hat on your block. You go to the front. Roy or Ben steams your hat and you pound your hat down over the block. You use a puller down and then a runner down, or is it the other way around? That pounding has a name. Once you get your hat down over your block and even with the bottom of your block, you loop a piece of string twice around and twist it in the front. This has a name. It’s to make a crease for the hatband. Then you start “pouncing,” which is sanding your hat with 400 sandpaper, then 600 sandpaper. Or is it the other way around.? Sanding rough felt creates piles of fluff and I’m sneezing my head off. My cold is worse. I feel like hell. ‘Smooth as a baby’s butt’ or ‘like velvet,’ people around me say as they caress the sanded crowns of their hats.

“Is this smooth enough?” I ask Ben.

She gives it a quick touch. “Keep going,” she says.

You have to sand counter-clockwise. Dan, the patient man at my table who has ignored my nose-blowing, teases Ben, “Do you do it in the other direction in Australia?”

“That’s right,” she grins. With her accent, it sounds like “Tha’s roit.”

Next is Flanging the Brim. which sounds like a Scottish jig, but is ironing the brim —very carefully. Then you spray your hat with rubbing alcohol and set it on fire with a small blowtorch. That process also has a name. It’s to get all the fine hairs. You take your hat up front to Roy and he conditions it with a sprits of baby oil on the light hats, mink oil on the black hats. I forgot to mention that we have moved on to day two. After day one, I went back to the hotel, fixed two stiff drinks, took two Advil, and went to bed. So much for whooping it up in downtown Elko. Anyway, in the middle of day two we were at the crucial point where we must commit to a style of hat. Everyone has a plan but me. They all know what kind of crown and crease, whether their brim will have a pencil roll or not; whether they will sew trim, which will be tedious but look cool.

Cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell making a hat much like the one he is wearing.

 In the Jaxonbilt catalog it is called an “Elko,” with a Boone crown, Nevada snap brim and a full bound edge.

Do not try to make a hat using my notes. I left out important steps. You don’t have the tools. For example, I doubt you own a conformateur, a wicked contraption invented by the French that Roy or Ben clamps on your head to measure your skull form. Of course, the result is that your hat is your hat.

I took this class because I wanted to know how to make a cowboy hat, not because I think I look good in hats. I don’t. During free moments, I would borrow cowboy hats, go into the ladies room, and try them on. I realize now that it was a breach in hat etiquette; nevertheless, I tried five or six styles. I didn’t look good in any of them.

With stuffed nose and plaintive voice, I said, “Ben, I don’t know what to do.”

She replied in her robust Aussie way, “Myself, I like a wide brim.” I should have paid more attention to the way she stretched her arms when she said, “Wide.” In hat lingo, she told me how she would shape the crown and what she would do with the brim. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I nodded in approval. “Sound great!” I said.

It was reasonable for me to think that a master hat maker would be a better judge of what kind of hat I should make than I would Besides, I really like Ben. She is unpretentious, opinionated, and has a rowdy sense of humor. At one point we exchanged tasteless jokes about old people and admitted to the necessity of swearing under certain circumstances. She was patient with everyone and committed to seeing that each person came away with a quality product.

Ben helps western artist Willie Mathews fix his hat.

She told me anecdotes about her life in Queensland. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the nearest town, which was about fifty miles from where she lives. She and her husband have cattle and train horses. On her iphone, Ben showed me a photo of their ten-year-old daughter, an adorable girl in a beautiful cowboy hat. obviously made by her mom.

She has a close-knit family. Ben’s brother musters cattle six days a week from his helicopter. Her sisters live in the nearby town. But when she talked about her mother, that’s what impressed me the most. “I’ve got the greatest mom,” she said. She told this to several of us around a table where she was helping someone with a hat. “If I told my mother that I’d like to fly to the moon, she would say, ‘You just do it!’” and Ben slapped her hand on her thigh, imitating her mother’s unconditional support and belief in her children.

In retrospect, I think Ben sized me up, took pity on me, and decided she was going to help me make a fine hat. At first, I didn’t see that. At first, I was worried that she thought of me as someone like Fiona Wanstall, a haughty Aussie matron in a big hat who lorded her social position over others.

Earlier, I had asked Ben if, back home, she had made a hat like this before. “Of course. Lots.” she said. She was sitting at my table making ribbon flowers for the extravagant hat that had taken shape.

“Name one person, “ I said.

“Fiona Wanstall,” she replied, folding sage-green gingham ribbon into a flower bow.

“Who’s she?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s a lady who’s very wealthy…thinks quite a lot of herself.”

“What does she do for a living?” I asked. I was re-sewing the sweat band on the inside of my hat. Ben made me take it out yesterday, because it was too loose.

“They own a cattle station. A big one.” Ben had her head down and I could tell she was biting her tongue.

Well, my hat was different from everyone else’s in the class. The “cowboy” was manifested in the beautiful silver beaver felt and the “Aussie” in the outback tilt of the brim. Otherwise, it is a ladies’ hat, more English than American, something to wear to a meeting of a garden club in Shropshire or on race day at Ascot. Waddie Mitchell did say it reminded him of the cowboy hats women wore at the turn of the century

I think Ben sizes people up, and she likes you or she doesn’t. Now, I am pleased that she could see me in such a grand hat. After all, I am seventy. While not quite “matronly” or “full-figured,” I’m headed in that direction. I like to think Ben is giving me a message—you can wear a fine hat and be yourself. Put on the hat. Chin up!

That’s what I did.

Ben said, “Okay, let me take your picture. Smile.”

“Fuck Fiona Wanstall,” I said to the camera.

Ben burst into laughter that filled the room.

That made everything worthwhile.

Thoughts on This Year's Cowboy Poetry Gathering

Arlene Croce, dance critic for the New Yorker magazine, raised a ruckus the year she wrote a review of  a performance by the Bill T. Jones Dance Company she  didn’t attend.  I experienced few of the week’s events of the 2012 Cowboy Poetry Gathering, but I still have an opinion:  ho-hum.

The setting, Elko, Nevada at the end of January, was appropriately bleak, a cold landscape of old snow and mud, more mining town than ranching center; fewer pickups with stock racks than half-ton rigs bearing the logos of mining companies or their suppliers.  Most were covered with the grime of two-lane highways and dirt roads that lead to the mine, not the ranch.  Actually, I liked the rough, dirty look of the place, more Butte than Missoula. 

 As I browsed through the Cowboy Poetry Gathering program, looking to see who were this year’s presenters, I recognized the same old faces.  No, same faces, now old.  I do have my credentials.  I started coming to the Gathering, which is held in my home town, that first year, 1985.  I remember Waddie Mitchell when he was just a kid, twenty-five years ago, and I can lament with the best of them the passing of great cowboy poets like Buck Ramsey.

  I can imagine the conversations among strangers standing in line in front of the closed doors of the Gold Room or the Turquoise Room at the Elko Convention Center, where most of the daytime events are held.  “Yep, we’ve been comin’ since ’92 or ’89 or ’85.”  However, among some of my rancher friends and locals, it’s about when they quit coming because the Gathering had gotten too commercial, too liberal, and most of all, “too goddam yuppie.” 

For me, the keynote address indicated how far the Gathering has strayed from its  intention to preserve and reflect authentic rural life in the West.  Before the keynote speaker gave his address, Waddie Mitchell, a true buckaroo and one of the first and finest of the cowboy poets, received a Distinguished Nevadan award from the Nevada Arts Council.  After a brief thank you, Waddie recited a long anti-war poem and then left the stage. 

 The keynote speaker was a veteran Hollywood character actor.  He rambled on about his career in western movies, and two tv series, Lonesome Dove and Northern Exposure.  In the latter he played a retired astronaut.   He could tell a good anecdote and the audience seemed to enjoy him.  A bad sign.  I thought he was another full-of-himself bullshitter.  I guess that’s a cowboy of a certain type.

Here in Tuscarora, where I live part of the year, the ranching community is in dire straights:  government bureaucracies and antagonistic  attitudes make many of the ranchers feel like their lifestyle is both misunderstood and endangered by urban people.   Like Elko in January, real ranch life is too gritty for   phony nostalgia.