Thursday, January 15, 2004

You can judge a man by the hat he wears... Some guys collect hats and hang 'em on the wall. Some toss 'em in the back of the truck, where the dog can lie on 'em and smell 'em up pretty bad. Me, I wear 'em. I've worn all sorts of hats over the years. When I was a kid, I had a plain wide-brim khaki job I pinned up to look like an Aussie campaign hat. I'd stick a feather in it now & then when I found a nice one like an owl or red-tailed hawk tail feather. Nowadays, it's illegal even to pick up a feather from a federally protected raptor, but back then the feathers and the birds that wore them were fair game. My friend Dave Richey has posted his own musings on old hats in today's edition of his weblog. Some guys just have a thing for hats, and it seems Dave is one of them. I have been wearing Big Guy Hats on special occasions, for about six years. Jeff Kahlow, AKA "Big Guy," is the genius behind these foam creations. He started out putting ducks on baseball caps for a local Ducks Unlimited dinner in Fond du Lac, Wis. Then he moved on to other critters, mainly fish and other game birds. He walked into a bar on Lake Winnebago once during sturgeon spearing season with a hat sporting a four-foot foam sturgeon under each arm and sold them in minutes. That's when he knew he was onto something. Since then, he has made hats for fans of many NFL teams, most notably the Green Bay Packers, and other sports teams as well, including the Milwaukee Bucks. TV broadcasts of NFL and NBA games often feature tight shots of people wearing his outrageous hats. He put together a huge "Ultimate Packer Fan" costume and wore it to a game at Lambeau Field, which led to an invitation to submit some items for the Packers Hall of Fame. Of course, his stuff was accepted, and now that costume, along with four of his hats and photos of people wearing his hats (including me and Ted Nugent) are in glass cases at the Packers hall of Fame. Speaking of The Nuge, Jeff has made dozens of hats for Teddly, many of them featuring African animals with muscled arms making gestures you can imagine at would-be hunters. My own favorite hat was "Da Turdy Point Buck" he made for me a couple years ago. I sometimes wear it when doing deer-hunting seminars. When I'm not wearing the 8-pointer eating a wedge of cheese, that is! Jeff also made a mascot for my TV show, Outdoor Wisconsin. If you go to our site, you can suggest a name for him. Later this year, we'll let people vote for the best names and award a prize. Jeff has become a good friend. He supplies outlandish hats when I need something special for an event or for TV, such as the golfing fish he did for the Fish, Sticks & Stones tournament at Idlewild Golf Course in Door County last fall. All his hats are hand made, one at a time, in his basement workshop. Big Guy is a genius, and a little bit crazy. Check out his site and you'll see what I mean! Later... 9:49:30 PM    comment []