Brad Pullum: Songwriter, appraiser, inventor

By Karen Middleton
karen@athensnews-courier.com

ATHENS June 29, 2009 12:12 pm

— A widely known problem among cowboys and wannabe cowboys is having your hat slide off your dash when you turn a corner.
Now, Brad Pullum, a local man most noted as a real estate appraiser, songwriter and former lawman, has come to the aid of fellow cowboy-hat wearers with an invention to solve this problem.
“As anyone knows who wears a cowboy hat, if you set it on the seat next to you it can mess up the shape of the brim, and besides you don’t want someone sitting on it,” said Pullum. “And if you set it on the dash, it’s probably going to slide off, and some folks use Armor All on their dash, and that might go up into the felt and stain the hat. Some of these hats can run up into the hundreds of dollars, so you don’t want that happening.”
Pullum, a frequent cowboy-hat wearer, thought long and hard on this vexing problem, sure that no one had thus far come up with a solution.
“It’s well-tested,” he said. “You put your hat on the dash, go around curves fast, the hat slides across the dash and falls on the floor.”
Pullum had an idea and began to look around for materials with which to construct his invention. He found some sticky rubber disks at an automotive store, padding, pleather—fake leather—and decorative bands and went to work in his garage with a hot-glue gun.
Shaping the padding and the pleather to simulate the top of a person’s head, Pullum glued the pillow-like pad to the sticky rubber disk and came up with “The Leather Mushroom.”
He plopped The Leather Mushroom on his dash, settled his cowboy hat on it, and went out and took some curves real fast in his Hummer. The Leather Mushroom and hat stayed put, so he knew he had a potential success on his hands.
“My first guinea pig was the sheriff (Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely, a devoted cowboy-hat wearer),” said Pullum. “I took one up for him to try out and he called me that night and said, ‘I’m not believing this. I’m on these curvy roads up by Veto and my hat hasn’t moved a bit.’”
But still, something didn’t seem right.
“That’s the name I came up with, but that really didn’t have anything to do with cowboys, other than cowboys might step on a mushroom out in the cow pasture,” said Pullum.
As a long-time amateur inventor, Pullum had observed that sometimes a rose by any other name doesn’t smell as sweet, contrary to what Shakespeare wrote. He knew the commercial success of a product often hinges on its name.
He sat down with Blakely for a brainstorming session on a more marketable name.
“The sheriff said, why don’t you call it ‘The Hat Buddy?’ I called my lawyer right then and had him to get the name changed on the patent,” said Pullum.
Next, Pullum and Blakely hopped in the truck and drove into the heart of a state where babies enter the world already wearing cowboy hats—Texas.
“We went to see the people at a company called Hatco,” said Pullum. “They own the Stetson and Resistol brands. They’re the biggest hat makers in the world. We went to test the waters and see what they thought. The vice president of that company was just carried away. He said he thought it would be a great seller.”
“Other than that, we went to Billy Bob’s Texas, the world’s largest honky-tonk. This place is so big it has five saloons, an inside arena, and a big retail store.”
There seemed no better environment in which to unveil his invention than this urban cowboy mecca.
Pullum said the Billy Bob reaction also was positive to The Hat Buddy.
Pullum, married to Tonia Eckhart Pullum, and the father of three daughters, Shelby, 17, Olivia, 14, and Presley, 10, has invented other devices, such as a heated and cooled steering wheel, long-armed car washer, and microwave hot water heater, he has never had them patented.
But he might go all the way with The Hat Buddy.

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