Here we are at the tail end of February. It sure did fly by, didn't it? Another week is almost near an end and with that comes another Thursday Tack and Tale from Stockmen's Memorial Foundation ready to be read.
This week I thought I would go back to a hat selection and since we touched on the WineGlass ranch last week, it seemed rather fitting to choose the used for everything, white hat of Edith Wearmouth.
Edith grew up on the WineGlass Ranch just south of Cochrane where her great grandfather, Frank Towers, homesteaded in 1885. It is said that her hat was purchased around 1989, just in time to get really broken in on the 1990 Hooves of History Cattle Drive. This event was held to make a buck or two for the Western Heritage Centre in Cochrane. During the cattle drive, what didn't happen to Edith's poor hat. It was stepped on by horses and humans, saw a little rain and someone even made a nice little pillow of it later in the eve.
At one point in life Edith even used her hat for her children to practice roping it. The three siblings were actively involved in 4-H cattle penning and roping and Edith sure was creative in her methods of teaching. During this time her hat tagged along to all the children's rodeos, bull sales and horse sales. It even got suckered into working cattle with them, shingling the barn roof, painting the barn and digging good ol' post holes. The funny bone in Edith would place her hat on just about anything with intentions of making others grin including her grandchildren, various dogs and even dolls.
There used to be a red hat band and a "stampede string" on Edith's chapeau. This was added to it about 10 years after the first cattle drive. The string acted as a new accessory and allowed it to be hung from the saddle horn, tree branches and rightfully so on Edith's back. I mentioned earlier what wasn't her hat used for, well she also used it for feeding her pup while out in the field, it held oats to feed her horse and that stampede string sure came in handy, allowing her to tie up anything that was needed. Of course her hat saw some rough days as a working lady needed her working hat. It would occasionally land in the dirt or even manure and get tossed across the field by the wind - which a frantic Edith would be scrambling to muster up.
In time, the more we wear our hats, the more they become part of us. If those hats could only talk, I'm sure they'd have lots of yackety-yak to share. Like all hats, Edith's began to take on a shape of its own. She was often known to grab the front and grab the back and pull it down. This long time habit made her headgear become curved near the front and near the back, a look certainly unique to her.
As years went on, so did Edith's hat eventually running its course by 2009. There was no hope to reshape it over a steaming kettle and all those years of pulling it over a sweaty head caused the inside band begin to pull away, making for an overly stretched, uncomfortable wear. Edith's hat survived 20 years of laughter, tears and some old fashioned hard work. It now hangs in the rafters at Stockmen's Memorial Foundation side-by-side other tattered hats with stories to share.
