Monday, December 3, 2018

An ancient soul recalls a hat...

The  daughter Rie posted on  Facebook a photo commemorating the Holidays Party at Newell's workplace.  They were attired in "Roaring Twenties" costumes assembled from their own creativity.

Rie expressed pride in her hat, which to me was a "Miss Fisher" hat, and to The Matriarch was a "cloche" hat.

The Matriarch acted as if she had never heard my "hat" story which I really thought I had already mentioned many times!

In the year that I was four, cousin Billie Ruth, who lived next door, with her parents and brother, presented me with a brilliant green cloche, which she may not have worn herself, since she was a teenager in 1940, but (in retrospect), she may have been acting in her mother's behalf.

I did not know it at the time, as I proudly wore the woman's hat as often as I went outdoors, we were approaching the culmination of a scheme my dad had been working toward for at least the greater part of a year.

Two days after Christmas, the parents packed up the car with a multitude of essentials, including my sister and me, to leave Nacogdoches for the Texas coast.

It was quite crowded in the 1940 Chevrolet, but as soon as we were all situated, almost as if on cue, the Barfield kids who lived behind us on Center Road, appeared with a coaster wagon asking if we had anything we wanted to "sell".  Mom handed MY hat, which she had been holding in her lap, out to one of the girls, and we drove away.

The last I saw of my beautiful green hat was the Barfield kid skipping away toward home wearing the hat and holding onto it with both hands, probadly to save it from being snatched by a sibling.




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