Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/590511
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 5 5 C hristmas morning. The high country was covered with a foot of new- fallen snow that had come as an unexpected gift during the night. The road that wound up through Sam's Gap was glazed with a thin layer of silver ice, and we couldn't get across the mountain from Tennessee and into North Carolina to have dinner with my wife's family. But thus far here on the western slope, we only had an inch or two of light fluffy powder on the ground. So, with plenty of leftovers already stuffed away in the 'fridge and Mary Jane curled up with the cats and her new flannel blanket, I began to sense the seductive tug of the river and the freshly fallen snow and decided to go trout fishing. I always keep a good fly rod rigged and ready for such errant impulses, and my waders and landing net and old belt pouch are ever on alert. So I stuffed some cold turkey and dressing into a couple of zip bags, along with a big slice of apple-peal pie for desert, gathered my gear, and headed for the river. I was a mile down Watauga Road before I realized I had forgotten my hat and turned back to retrieve it. I t's a good hat, old and discolored with the stains of age, given to me long ago by my surrogate brother Texas and New Mexico and Colorado on it long and steady progression from "new" to "vintage." At one time, it had been a very expensive hat. But now it was priceless. I had worn it for years now myself, in all manner of weather and contemplation, from my home in Tennessee to the tundra and mythic salmon-and-trout rivers of the great north country, to the relentless sand and sun and saltwater flats of the warm southern seas. But I'd taken it back New Mexico only once. I had slipped it on in Santa Fe one cold December night during a blizzard as I fetched my rifle and travel bag from the truck when I pulled in to Frank's big adobe house, at the end of a long and grueling three-day run from my home back east. For a moment, Nolene had actually thought I was Frank as she held the front door open for me and helped lift the duffle from my shoulder. I surprised her as I knocked the snow from the old hat's brim beneath her eve and then set it on her long wooden table. And that's where it spent the night. The following morning, Frank and I had headed north at daybreak. He had worn that old hat from Alaska to Florida. But he could hardly ever bring himself to wear it back to its original home in New Mexico. Frank Simms. And now, many of its stains were my own. It had been made long ago in Texas from the finest hare-and-beaver felt, and hand-formed by women and men who knew what a fine hat is supposed to be. It was a classic Resistol with a wide, swooping, five-inch brim, and it fit both Frank and me perfectly. It was properly tattered by years of use on horseback, on foot and in pickup trucks, in snow and rain and high desert heat, with good honest sweat stains and hair stickum circling the base of its crown, and tobacco smudges deeply embedded along its outer rim. Frank had long ago discreetly trimmed it with a simple warm-grey ribbon, and it had spent its first two or three decades with him in Michael Altizer a m b l i n g s R