Has anyone seen a giant, half-naked cowboy? No, no, I’m not looking for a date, I just want to let him know he left his Hat n’ Boots in a suburban park in Seattle, Washington. We’ve all been there before!
The cap-tivating Hat n’ Boots have become icons of the Emerald City, but look ridiculously out of place in the nascent Oxbow Park, just down the road from the Big Spider – and not just because of the surprising deft of cattle rearers in the area.
They absolutely dwarf the jungle gym and loom large over the nearby houses, and there’s barely enough lace – sorry, I mean space – for them at all. There is, of course, a fantabulous story behind how they ended up in this scrap of a playground
Way back in 1953, local oddball Buford ‘The Candyman’ Seals decided to build a western-themed shopping centre named Frontier Village by the freeway in the suburb of Georgetown. With visions of gunfights lighting up the Pacific Northwest, The Candyman wasted no time tapping fellow dreamer Lewis Nasmyth to design a centrepiece for this Cowpoke Disneyland.
It wasn’t Lew’s first rodeo and, fifteen minutes later, his masterpiece had been carefully sketched on the back of a napkin. A single, bright red cowboy hat would shelter a gas station, with two monstrous cowboy boots serving as public toilets. Wee-haw!
You’d think such an experience would bring these two visionaries together for life, but it wasn’t to be. Buford – a well-known blabbermouth – went a-head and told anyone who cared to listen that he’d designed the Hat ‘n’ Boots. Lewis, a man of honour and principle, never spoke to him again.
Hats off to you, Lew!
You can leave your hat on
The fedorable Big Hat would measure 19 feet high and 44 feet across, with Lew singlehandedly bending each of the 24 cantilevered beams. The cowboy boots were a true feet of modern engineering, with the weight of public expectation spurring Lew towards greatness.
One was 21.5 feet high, painted light blue, with room inside for cowgirls. The other, slightly taller at 24 feet and painted dark blue, was for the cowboys. Lew put his heart and sole into his work, spending hours manipulating the boots’ steel mesh structure so they’d look like John Wayne had just kicked them off.
Unfortunately the plumbing was quite poor, and the toilets often became clogged – ha!
The western-themed service station, known as Premium Tex, opened in 1954, bringing with it a stampede of hillbillies, bumpkins and slack-jawed yokels from the surrounding hills. There were several gas types to shoes from and, For A Few Dollars More, customers could buy a toaster as they filled up. Worth it for those who had the bread, I suppose.
Buford, a well-known spendthrift, declared bankruptcy sometime later and fled to San Diego. On the positive side, he no longer had to cope with getting the stinkeye from Lew Nasmyth every time he stepped out of the house.
These Boots were made for walkin’
Apart from a poorly-stocked supermarket, the rest of Frontier Village never came to be, and the gas station was later sold and renamed Hat n’ Boots. Personally I think it was a missed opportunity not to call it Pumps n’ Pumps, but anyway. When the centre a new freeway bypassed the station in the late-70s, the writing was on the wall – and, sadly, on the Hat n’ Boots, which were regular targets of vandalism.
The toilets closed in 1980 – although ne’er-do-wells would attempt to sneaker in late at night – and the gas station followed in 1988. The Hat n’ Boots fell into disrepair, as has happened to so many of our beautiful Big Things over the years, such as Harvey the Rabbit, the Big Prawn and the Big Pineapple.
But saddle up, pardner, because the epic tale of Hat n’ Boots is full to the brim with twists and turns that will bring you tears of joy.
Once Upon a Time in the Pacific Northwest
The good people of Georgetown were fiercely proud of their colossal cowboy clobber, and their downfall was mirrored by the fortunes of the suburb. There was nary a smile to be found, and it seemed like a dark cloud constantly cast the town in shadow. Oh wait, that’s just how it is in Seattle.
The locals wanted to restore the Hat n’ Boots to their former glory and thus kicked off a decade-long effort to save them. Led by self-confessed Big Thing tragic Allan Phillips and his beloved wife, La Dele Sines, the little people of Georgetown took their fight all the way to the big-wigs in City Hall.
Battling bureaucracy and the unbearable crush of progress, they refused to give up, often shutting down the city for months at a time in their quest to save these cultural icons. Which is, apparently, just how they do things in Seattle.
Finally, sanity prevailed, and the city sold the Hat n’ Boots to the good folk of Georgetown for the princely sum of $1. They were loaded onto a truck and sequestered four blocks to their current home in 2003. It took another seven years to complete the restoration process. Maybe if they spent less time flapping their tongues, and more time painting the Boots’ tongues, it wouldn’t have taken so long.
Lew Nasmyth, who still had samples of the Hat’s original paint scheme, oversaw the restoration… which led to one final Mexican standoff. Prosperity and positivity attracted bad guys like moths to a flame, including one conman who had seemingly left town for good many years earlier.
The Good, the Bad and the Buford
High noon hung over Seattle when Buford Seals pulled up in his shiny white limousine, stepped out in his garish snakeskin boots, and moseyed right on into Oxbow Park, the new home of Hat n’ Boots.
The menfolk gasped and scurried out of his way. Some of the womenfolk screamed; the others fainted right there on the spot. Buford Seals, his smile whiter and brighter than ever, dragged a darkness into this happy place.
Overhead, a single vulture circled hungrily.
“Alright folks, let’s make some money,” Buford enthused, rubbing his plump fingers together with glee. “I see a hotdog stand over here, only the hotdogs will have little cowboy hats on them. We’ll sell ’em for $15 a pop – the rubes won’t know what hit ’em! We’ll have to get rid of the playground to make room for the souvenir shop, and…”
“Buford,” Lew spat, breaking decades of silence as he stepped out of the shadows. “This family park featuring an oversized cowboy hat and matching cowboys boots ain’t big enough for the two of us.”
The good people of Georgetown crowded in behind Lew Nasmyth, supporting their fearless leader. Buford’s smile dropped as the townsfolk appeared from everywhere. They crowded atop the Boots in their dozens. Children and grannies and dogs were perched from the brim of the Hat. They stared in silent unison at the coward Buford Seals.
Somewhere, in the distance, a lone crow called through the silence.
They say that, when the wind blows just right past the Hat ‘n’ Boots, you can still hear the screams of Buford Seals as he was run out of Georgetown for good. He passed away, far from the Hat ‘n’ Boots, in 2008. His lifelong rival, Lew Nasmyth, swaggered off to the big filling station in the sky in 2016, a hero to the people of Seattle until the end.
Hat’s all, folks!
