Many of you who have camped with me, have commented on my former cap. One that was so greasy from my self-basting noggin that it remained moist through entire winters of hook hung disuse. I loved that hat. Yet . . . well . . . I willingly cast my trusty old chapeau, so full of my genetic material that it was more like a parasitic twin than an article of clothing, into a blazing funeral pyre after laying ownership to the magnificent cap pictured above.
It's a super old fitted cap of canvas wool and a little simulated rabbit with just a teasing edge of a manufacturers label stitched into its innards.
I'm not going to josh you about not knowing what this hat is really designed for. I know it's for the safety and style conscious deer hunter who wants to be safe in the woods and who also wants to look unlike a dufus while walking down the street.
However, I have dubbed this hat my drinking buddy for it serves an additional, more beneficial service, when perched upon my head at the local watering hole. Just a quick, upfront conversation and demonstration with the barkeep makes both of our jobs easier. He can be made instantly aware of my need for a cold one with out frequently asking and I can keep my machine gun pace of drinking up unmolested.
It's quite simple. My hat maintains it's placid green hue while I am sated, consuming a barley pop. But, once I fear that I may be getting a bit too close to the bottom of the bottle, the cap takes on an enraged, thirsty crimson color, alerting the barkeep that the fragile peace of my end of the bar is in jeopardy should I not find myself in posession of a replacement beer, tout de suite.
I love my new hat.
Pyramid Home 
On one of these trips, I found a record called 50 Country and Western Hits. It was one of those half-assed Starday compilations of Nashville also-rans. I picked it up for my girlfriend at the time.
In all honesty, I never really scruitinzed at the album cover until I heard an amazing sound, a Framptonesque cover of the late Porter Waggoner's Satisfied Mind.
There on the cover were the standard country dandies in all of their early sixties Grand Ol Opry wannabe stylings; white Stetsons, bolo-ties, toothy smiles. Except one photo. It showed the profile of this balding, pallid, liver-lipped nobody wearing a paisley shirt. It was Pete Drake, the artist who 'sang' the amazing song.
Always wanting to assume that art is born from adversity, and trying to make sense of the soul wrenching truth meets Steven Hawking vocals, and not knowing Drake's background, I contrived my own history of Pete Drake.
In my mind, he was a young trachiotomy victim, who fell in love with the true country legends, but because of his ailment (pasty, liver-lipped, voice-box-removed) couldn't sing. So he picked the closest instrument to a human voice box (steel guitar) and rigged the open hole in his neck to a microphone wired in to the pickups on said steel guitar so he could sing.
I began collecting as much of his steel guitar work as possible. I have a lot. I love it more than Charlie Rich singing "Life Has It's Little Ups and Downs". And, that, my friends, is a lot.
So, long story short, through the back covers of his albums and a little poking around, I learned that Mr. Drake was not disabled. He originally played steel in The Sons of The Pioneers back in the '50s. He became a session musician for Nashville, picking up where legendary picker, Speedy West left off, sitting in on nearly every session requiring steel guitar from 1959 to roughly 1974. During much of his early career, he worked an early morning job delivering milk (his nickname was The Milkman).
Most of you not prone to overalls and bare feet (I pity you) can sample more of Pete Drake's work on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.
Thanks for the video and coincidence, Boing Boing.