Skip to main content

A new fishing hat

I started to fish when I came to Colorado. The piccolo player (and supply clerk) had a reputation of being an outstanding fisherman so I decided to ask him to teach me. The old saying " Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will draw the ire of his wife." Fortunately my wife supported my new hobby. Willy was a quiet man and pretty much a loner in the band, I was a little intimidated at first asking for help and the first 2 or 3 times fishing with him were quite reserved. Once he realized that I was committed to the sport his attitude changed. That was 1971 and we have been friends to this day. 
 Willy was an expert bait and spinner fisherman but knew a lot about fly-fishing and so I started to accumulate all of my tackle based on his knowledge. Rods, reels, line, lures, and a hat.
After he retired and returned to Florida I drifted away from bait and lure fishing and concentrated on my fly-fishing. Fly rods, flies, and all of the other fly-fishing gear became my focus and the spinning rods, bait, and lures stayed home. Except for the hat.
It was a Filson tin cloth packer hat that I happened to see in a sporting store. At first I only wore this hat for fishing but soon chose it for hiking, backpacking and any other time that I went to the woods. This was 1972 which makes it 48 years old. On my first fishing trip this year I noticed that my hat's leather band had become unglued again (3rd or 4th time) and the wax finish was gone again (2nd time).
It was decision time...... new hat? How could I? But I bit the bullet and went to the Filson site, this time choosing their Tin Cloth Bush hat with a wider brim for more sun protection. 




My 48 year old Packer hat



My new Bush hat

No, my old hat will not be thrown away. It will hang on my wall providing great memories.
And on some very special occasions I will wear it to relive those memories.  






Comments

  1. When we talked yesterday, I thought I'd see a mangled hat. It's not that bad. Your new one is certainly impressive. And I like the wide brim. I often wondered who taught you how to fly-fish. I knew it wasn't Pop. I thought maybe it was Stan. Enjoyed our talk yesterday about drum pads. It was good seeing the Gladstone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well that hat was certainly worth what ever you paid for it! The wider brim of the new one will help shade your face from the sun! I wear one when i mow the lawn! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

La Caverna del oro

 One of our first backpacking trips in Colorado was in the Sangre de Christo Mountains. One mountain in particular drew our attention. Marble Mountain was the location of a famous story of a Spanish cave of gold. There are many places on the web that tell this story better than I could, suffice it to say that we wanted to locate it and see the iconic 'Maltese Cross' located at it's entrance.  In 1974 after I got out of the Army we invited some friends to join us on this trip. We parked our car at the trailhead in the Wet Mountain Valley and backpacked up Marble Mountain to 12,000 feet. In one of the culverts we found the entrance to the cave. Maltese Cross at the Caverna del oro It turned out to be a real thing. The large red cross was still visible after 400 yrs. According to legend the Spanish put it there in the 1600's. I did have the courage to crawl into it but only a few feet. After about 10 feet there is a vertical shaft that drops about 750 feet!  The Cross is v...

The Amadinda

  The Amadinda is an African xylophone originally made from slabs of wood or even large sticks, with or without gourds for resonators. There was no reason for this project other than to see if I could make a simple mallet instrument. The box was made from plywood (which also acted as the resonators) and the bars were made from maple.  Since this was to be a true xylophone, the bars were all of equal width. Tuning was done by cutting the bars to different lengths and removing material from the bottom. Using a router I created a sort of 'stepped pyramid' instead of the traditional arc cut found on marimba or xylophone bars.  Cutting the underside is not only for tuning but it focuses the pitch and creates the characteristic overtones of the instrument. Since I wanted to play this with other 'Western' instruments, I chose to use a pentatonic scale of 2 2/5 octaves (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#). Two people sit on either side of the instrument and strike the ends of ...

Zenith tubes, Analema, and Crossed Trapezes

The Zenith Sun  A common characteristic in Mesoamerica is the observance of the sun's zenith passage. This happens when the sun passes directly overhead at noon. It appears twice a year around late April and mid-August. Many ancient sites from Mexico east to the Yucatan seem to have systems built into their architecture to show this phenomenon. In the Mayan city of Kabah there is a cylindrical stone marker placed vertically in a plaza that seems to act as a gnomon that will produce a shadow every day except during the time of the sun's zenith position when the shadow disappears. In Monte Alban, Oaxaca and Xochicalco, Mexico the devices are more sophisticated. These have Zenith tubes in buildings that direct the rays of the sun down their passages to produce a circle of light onto the floor of a darkened chamber.  Looking up through the zenith tube Sun light on the floor of Xochicalco zenith tube. The Mixtec A-O glyph The Mixtec A-O glyph was their symbol for 'year'. The...