No country music festival is complete without a cowboy hat.

At least, that’s the lesson I learned this weekend when I attended Country Stampede 2005 in Manhattan, Kan.

And now I have one.

After feeling decidedly out of place around the cowboy-types at the festival and finding myself to be acutely dehydrated, I shelled over some cash and got myself a hat.

My hat is pretty conservative, judging by standards set by the more flamboyant and adventurous cowboy-types. It lacks the neon colors, rhinestones, ribbon, feathers and leopard print characteristic to many of the other hats making their way around the dusty grounds of Tuttle Creek State Park.

Despite its apparent lack of wild west flair, my hat performed its job admirably. It shaded my face from the sun’s burning rays and helped me blend in with the crowd.

My friends and I received a lot of flack for attending a “hickfest.” The three of us openly admit we like country music, and we were more than happy to make the five-and-a-half-hour trip down to Manhattan.

However, we weren’t as happy about the additional three-and-a-half-hour wait in the car behind thousands of fellow fans just to get into the park on the first day.

Despite the accusations of the skeptics who mercilessly made fun of us for going, there are apparently a lot of country music fans out there.

Performances included Big and Rich, Montgomery Gentry, Sawyer Brown and Dierks Bentley, as well as several others.

By far, the best performance of the four-day festival was Keith Urban. My friends and I, however, may have been a little biased by his stunning good looks and Australian accent.

Speaking of accents, my high school friends from Kansas accused me of having an Iowa accent. And my friends from Iowa accused me of reverting back to a Kansas accent.

This sparked an immediate debate that lasted the entire weekend. People get really defensive about their accents, or rather, lack thereof.

Although by some accounts I have an accent, by no means do I consider myself to be the “cowboy-type,” nor would I ever be caught dead in a rhinestone cowboy hat. All things considered, Country Stampede turned out to be a fun experience, and I plan on going again next year.

Until then, my cowboy hat will be collecting dust on the top shelf of my closet.