Roping is tough. Riding bucking horses is tough. Shaping hats is tougher than both of them. I hate shaping hats, especially straw hats. However, I hate having anyone else do it, because they usually don’t do it right. If I buy a hat from a western wear store, I’ll go ahead and let the guy shape it. It tends to feed his ego, and that’s important to those hat shaper guys. However, I’ll usually go right home and reshape it myself. It’s easier than the torture of watching the trial and error and arguing with the shaper that usually sounds like: “I know that’s what the bull riders are wearing now, but I’d rather wear a dress than wear that stupid of looking hat.” So, I generally take them home and do whatever I have to do to make them my own. That’s generally not a one-time shot. It’s almost an evolutionary process. The first shape is a rough draft. Then after a lot of staring into the kitchen window, I’ll reshape it. Then, I’ll stare at the kitchen window reflection again, ask my bride what she thinks, and when she says, “Yeh. It looks fine,” I’ll have another go at it. Over the course of the next two weeks, I’ll shape and fine tune, and after three years and a few good rain storms, the hat looks like I want it to look. Not so with straws. They’re just weird. The only straws that will shape the way I want them to are palm leaf hats. Not the Atwood, brown kind. I’m talking about the genuine, braided, Sun Body hats made by J. Jimenez, or whoever happened to have signed the tag on the latest purchase. They’ve got a black elastic band, and they look custom made for irrigating with siphon tubes. The buckaroos wear them, although some of theirs have brims wide enough to hangglide with. Palm leaf hats are not the coolest rodeo hats, especially on announcers, who are supposed to pattern their looks after George Strait or Justin McKee. However, they shape awesome. Hold them underwater until the bubbles stop coming up, and start shaping. Good stuff. But real straw hats, like Resistols or Baileys, take a little shaping skill. I hate it. They’ve got that wire in the brim that doesn’t ever want to go where I want it to go. If I shape the front down too much, like I like it, the hats get a crinkle in the straw. That’s not acceptable when a guy has to trade a first born child for a straw hat. They’d better look good. Generally, I try and try, and after a while, I grab a felt hat and head for the rodeo. It was better when I rode bucking horses. People expected crinkles. I have learned, though, that hats will eventually take whatever shape we continually work into them. Lots of training and rainstorms and hot steam will eventually make a hat look good. Perfect, as a matter of fact. I guess we could take the Garth Brooks shortcut and throw our Black Golds in the bathtub, but then we’d look like Garth Brooks. Not necessarily a good thing. He can sing, but he can’t shape hats. God has the same task when shaping us. He has to use storms, constant touches, and sometimes a little heat to get us as close to perfect as we’ll get in this life. We may not look flawless when he’s done, but we look like a work of art. God’s got the shaping deal figured out. However, if we fail to bend, if we fail to yield, we’ll probably end up in the trash can or collecting dust on a hat rack. I’d rather get used for great things. God’s word tells us, in Jeremiah 18: “Then God’s Message came to me: ‘Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?’ God’s Decree! ‘Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don’t cooperate and won’t listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.’” I’d say it pays to be moldable, shapeable in hat terms. Bring on the steam, Lord. I’m ready!
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 05:16:52 +0000
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