Saturday Morning Surfing

It's been raining for the past two days, and the weather-weenies tell us that another drenching is on the way.  So be it.  The Thorn Valley Shootist Society is not meeting today, due to the weather.  We shoot in an enclosed barn, but the road in to the range is sketchy at best.  We've decided to let it dry out before we try to get back in there.

So, I'm surfing about, and someone on the Book of Face led me to a page concerning Buck Taylor, an artist and actor who has been making his living for several decades in front of a camera.  Lots of folks may not realize that Taylor is also an accomplished fine artist, with drawings and paintings to his credit.  Some of us may remember him mainly from his acting career.  Some recall Newly, from the Gunsmoke series, and others recall him as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson from the movie Tombstone.

Which leads me to one of my favorite clips from that movie, which introduces us to his character.



It's a great little clip with tons of magnificent dialogue. "He crawfished a bet and called me a liar."

But, I'm looking at his hat, which seems to be a campaign hat of some kind.  We know that the movie is set in Tombstone, AZ and the clip occurred historically sometime before October 1881.  Here's another picture of Taylor wearing that hat.

I'm looking at the crease on that hat, familiar to many of us as the campaign crease, or Mountie crease, or the Smokey the Bear crease, and I''m wondering if it was authentic to the early 1880s?

The quandry comes in because I'm looking for a tan hat correct to the period, and I'm not sure what crease, if any, was used on common hats of the period.  What do y'all think?