HEROES AND THEIR HATS

Joe Brown's father didn't buy a lot of new hats, and when he did, he rode them as hard the first hour as he did the day they fell apart. Tom Mix, on the other hand, a family friend of the Browns, always wore a new hat, usually a 7X beaver creased in a Montana peak.

MY FIRST THREE YEARS of formal education were

given me at Lincoln School in Nogales. I missed most of the second year, 1937, with an earache. My mother worked at the county assessor's office for John Elias, so I was laid up in Granny Maude Sorrells' house on the Tucson Road. My 2-year-old sister, Sharon, stayed there, too.

Every once in a while my dad's partners in the ABC Cattle Co., Roy Adams and Herb Cunningham, stopped in to visit. Their cowboys, my uncles Buster Sorrells and George Kimbro, stopped to visit me every time they drove to Nogales. I cowboyed with them when I was healthy and had partnered with them my whole life.

My dad had been sending them cattle from the Sierra de San Juan in Mexico and was due to come home any day. When they drove those herds down the highway past Granny's house from Nogales, Sonora, to the Baca Float Ranch on the American side, Granny would wrap me in a blanket and sit me on her front porch so I could watch them go by.

Dr. Gonzales, who had been born and raised in the Philippines, came to see me once a week and told Granny to keep warm olive oil in my ear. That winter, after his remedy failed, he arranged for my mother to take me to Dr. Smith, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist in Tucson. She thought we would be there quite a while, so we took aroom in the Kentucky Heights Boarding House. To make sure I didn't revert to illiteracy, my mother put me in Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School. After I'd been under the supervision of a tall, skinny and very stern nun for about a week, Dr. Smith called me in for my first treatment. I climbed into a tall chair in his office. He brandished a shiny spear and came at me under a surgical mask, took hold of my head, lanced an abscess in my ear and held it over a basin while it drained. My mom stood close by my side until she got a look at the corruption that I had carried around next to my brain for eight months. Then, she fainted and bumped her head on the way to the floor. After she revived, Dr. Smith helped her to a couch. He then turned back to me, swabbed out my ear with cotton, smeared it with iodine and turned me loose.

I had not even had time to beller. A week later, he did the same thing to another abscess that the first had hidden and turned me loose for good. My poor mother stayed out of the room for that one. Dr. Smith's office was next door to the Santa Rita Hotel, the only place where all the Southern Arizona cattlemen, traders, cowboys and their families congregated when they were in Tucson. After that second session with the doctor, my mom took me to the Santa Rita bar and gave me a shot glass of beer while she had a shot of "nervine." I think her “nervine” was Old Grand-Dad bourbon whiskey. She didn't like it but figured she needed it. Whiskey rem-edied every malady in our family, diagnosed or not, and it tasted bad enough to make her hope it was medicinal.

The night before the last session with the doctor, she had called Granny with news that the doctor might release me so we could go home. One by one, my dad and little sister Sharon, Dad's partners and my uncles arrived at the hotel to see if we needed them. Uncles Joe and Buster Sor-rells traveled to Tucson together. Their brother, Fred, who drove the Greyhound bus from Douglas to Tucson, showed up, too. Uncle George Kimbro was the last one to join the roundup. Each one had cowboyed up when Granny called them about me without knowing their partners would have the same idea.

My ear never bothered me again. The bartender in the Santa Rita was already a good friend of ours and kept my shot glass full of beer. Everyone wanted to make sure my ear healed properly. Sharon, who was called “Curly Girl” by the crew, held forth with a glass of the new Shirley Temple drink and got as wild as any veteran party girl.

Roy Adams' wife, Helen, came with him. She could party harder than anybody. A few minutes after they arrived, Roy whispered something in her ear. She smiled, nodded her head and left the bar. Twenty minutes later she came back on the arm of Tom Mix and introduced him to me. He handed me a pair of buckskin chaps with “Joey” branded on the flaps over the pockets.

Tom Mix was my favorite movie-show cowboy, mostly because he was a friend of my folks. He looked enough like my uncles to be their full brother. He talked to me as if he'd known me all my life.

“Joey, I've been anxious to meet you,” he said. “Those chaps are my get-well present.” All I could do right then was shake his hand and stare at his face.

“How's your little horse, Pancho?” he asked. I'd left Pancho back in our camp in the Sierra de San Juan when I came out of Mexico to start school the year before.

“You know Pancho?” I asked.

“Not in person, but I've heard a lot about him.” “Your horse Tony's sure good-looking,” I said.

“He's a good horse. You and I are well-mounted, aren't we?”

“Pancho's off down at La Morita.”

“I hear you've been making a hand down there, Joey. Good man. When you going back?”

“Maybe next summer after I get out of school.”

“Roy and Helen told me you were sick. I had to drive over here, so I asked a friend in the wardrobe department at the studio to make you a pair of chaps. They're real buckskin. Roy told me how big you are. I hope they fit.” I thanked him and took the chaps off the table and held them against my waist. They were 6 inches too long, but it wouldn't matter once they straddled a horse. They should have lasted me a long time, but I never wore them. To not wear them was sure a good way for them to last a long time, but I never even saw them again after I had to go away to boarding school in Santa Fe.

Tom Mix was dressed in a new three-piece suit and a new hat, the same kind of 7X beaver that the men in my family wore. His was creased in a Montana peak. My Uncle Buster creased his hat that way from time to time, too.

The way Tom Mix looked in his new hat and suit, fresh haircut and shiny boots made me stand back and compare him to my dad. I don't think Dad even owned a suit. Everybody in the world knew Tom Mix and my dad were cowboys by the way they dressed, but Dad was more of a real one and not near as fancy.

Dad's hats did not stay new for long. He usually bought a new one when he sold his cattle in the fall so he would look good while he celebrated in town. It did not look good more than a day or two, though. His celebrations lasted from two weeks to a month, and his new hats turned ramshackle by the time he left town.

He never put a good hat away in a box so it would stay clean and keep its shape for a time when he needed to look good in public. He bought himself the best 7X beaver hats and rode them as hard the first hour as he did the day they fell apart. When he decided he needed a new one, probably a year later, he left the old one in the store when he put the new one on. He never had a new hat blocked or steam-creased. He just dented in the crown on one side or another with his fist and went on outside with the brim straight and level.

It obtained its cowboy creases and shape with use. He used his left hand to refit it on his head when he needed to, so that side of the brim soon turned up higher than the right side, and the front gradually got pulled down until it was just right to shade his eyes. To even it out, he usually grabbed the two sides in both hands when he picked it up and squeezed, then he'd cram it on his head clear to his ears and pull it down in front. When he partied, he pushed it to the back of his head, a media cabeza, and cocked it over to one side so people could see his face and know how much fun he was having. He bought a new hat right after he got a haircut during his first hours in town. A day or two later, it looked like an old hat.

Our party in the Santa Rita did not disperse until dark. Tom Mix came out to see us off when we drove away. He stood alone with his hat cocked in a whiskey slant and watched us until we turned the corner out of sight. Our whole outfit then converged on the Kentucky Heights Boarding House, loaded our belongings and took us home to Nogales.

Hats and boots were important to us. No cattleman, trader or cowboy could be fully dressed without his hat and boots. Anyone who had to wear one without the other felt that he might as well go naked in his shorts on a city street.