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Hat's All Folks!
Eat at any rural American diner during breakfast or lunch and watch the gathering flock of not–so–rare, duck–billed, polyester–cotton blend caps. Catch the colorful group in the wee hours for the best display. They gradually disappear as dusk descends. By nightfall, they've settled into murky nesting places.
I recently spotted a large gaggle in a local fast–food restaurant. Surprised, I glanced around the tables, my mouth open and eyes bugged wide. Each of the thirty or so males in the place was wearing a cap! Remembering that my opened mouth was filled with breakfast, I quickly shut it and blinked rapidly to settle my displaced eyes. Feeling like an inept spy, I hunched my back and took furtive little peeks at the surrounding tables. The not–so–rare species sat quietly, looking like plucked geese incubating overly large, hair covered eggs; lanky and long haired eggs, short and trim haired eggs, even missing (I suspect) on top haired eggs!
Plastered with broadsides, the slick–breasted, poly–cotton birds sported embroidered patches advertising various wares. A couple of them hawked chewing tobacco (no pun intended), another a casino, one milk tank, three sports teams, a couch potato, the pleasures of grandfatherhood, the NRA, and the joys of retirement. I figured the fellow in the Florida hat had recently returned from somewhere, and that the leather–necked guy in the Mack truck hat was bound somewhere.
Sitting at a corner table was a gentleman in a light blue golf cap, its short, crisp brim framing his tanned face. As he walked out of the restaurant, I craned my already bent neck to a dangerous angle and watched him stroll to his motor home. Yep, he was from out of state. Silently, I prayed that he would not be overcome by a subconscious urge to buy a Petro cap at the truck stop up the road. I rather liked his natty little chapeau.
In the days following my discovery, I noticed several clever alternative ways to wear the not–so–rare species. Style variations seemed to change according to age, location, ethnic identification, MTV and peer pressure. Generally, the adult male positions his cap over his head with the dominant hand, places the fingers of the other hand over the elastic, or plastic, expansion band, and with the dominant hand pulls the brim neatly into place, brim forward, a military hold–over. Native Americans wear theirs covered in beads. Rap musicians and gang members wear their hats with the brims backward. I suppose that makes sense because it shades the posterior–crack peeking over the waist of their baggy jeans. God forbid they should get butt–burn.
Teen girls wear their caps sideways, thereby preventing the brilliant flash from those door–knocker earrings from blinding the cop sitting in the coffee shop across the street. I think the award for ingenuity should go the young teen boy who wore his cap inside out, brim back with the small white union–made label fluttering between his pale eyebrows. Talk about having it all!
If you're ever lost and find yourself really, really rural you might still see a brim flipped up, ala "Gomer Pyle". But you would probably need to walk a lot of back forties to find the one guy left in America who's still wearing it that way. He'll be the one bent over his antiquated tractor, cap bill snapped out of the way to enable his failing eyesight a closer look at the engine. Even rural America has access to over a hundred satellite television stations, so country residents are often seen wearing city–twisted caps.
Not–so–rare caps fill countless closet shelves, litter thousands of closet floors, lines pegs in the hallway and the back window ledges of cars. Some people collect the caps, having literally hundreds of the advertising bonnets tacked to their walls. Thousands upon thousands are trampled on truck floors each day. I've even used the cotton–poly species to wedge open the back door on a breezy afternoon. In a pinch, I've pulled a tattered cap from under the car's front seat and used it for scraping frost from the windshield.
My hat loving husband yelps, "Stop!" It's just a stupid hat, I'm thinking. Unable to reply through my blue frozen lips, I give him a stare that would freeze a melon in Miami. He fails to notice. The fraying brim of his Winnie–the–Pooh cap shades his eyes.
©The author reserves all rights to this essay.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
I'm a Chicago native until 1974 when I moved to Wisconsin. I'm within an hour of Madison, and right in the heart of the midwestern tourist area know as Wisconsin Dells. If tourists aren't threatening my life with their erratic driving, they're making me laugh with their fashion statement's.
I'm old enough that I no longer tell how old I am, although I've only been married for a year to Don Rice, wonder husband of the century. My critters include my Doberman, Shay; the orange cat that adopted us in July, Chan; and my parakeet, Mickeybird. I write serious essays as well as the goofier pieces. People just make me laugh – they're so funny being serious. When I'm not trying to stir the goo from the eyes of the muse, I'm out in the weeds shooting nature photographs.
Visit my Charly Makray–Rice Nature website. In addition, I'm a feature writer and photographer for The Inditer.Com.where you can also find my photo posted (for those of you interested in redheaded Amazons).
