For as long as I can remember, my dad wore a hat. He used it for his switchman’s railroad work and he wore it when he fished.
For the role it played in his wardrobe, he complained it was likely the reason he was going bald. I always thought my Dad was handsome, I guess most daughters do, and defiantly his hair thinned considerably as he got older, but whether it was from the lack of circulation a hat caused, I am not sure.
Even then, I thought that had to be a pretty tight hat to cut off that much circulation and since Dad was a logical man, maybe it was the best of possible evils to explain things.
My father’s American Indian ancestry was evident in smooth brown skin that held few wrinkles, wood-colored eyes, and in his thin, straight dark hair. As has been my observation about most men he was not alone in his fretting over the possibility of baldness, and for as long as he wore a hat and complained of its effect, he tried to countermine its blood-stopping, hair killing effects.
He used Vaseline hair oil.
Vaseline hair oil was among the few meterosexual options of his day, and it’s a far cry from the chemistry available now if you seek to tame or fluff or make there seem to be more hair then there is. Vaseline hair oil was a staple on our grocery list and in our medicine cabinet. A few drops would do it, in his palm and he was would rub into his scalp, which was increasingly easier to find. It made his freshly clean hair oily, and while his hair was likely not as dark as I thought it, it looked that way with the oil.
But a hat, for a working man, is a must.
Dad wore a switchman’s hat, grey, indistinct in color surely, with a bill but not close in the crown like a baseball one, more like the army issue of our working soldiers. It had a circular piece of material at the top. It was as far away from a baseball hat as you can get and still be a cap. Hats were good for keeping your head warm in the winter and for keeping the sun off your head in the summers. “Heat is exchanged at the top of your head,” Dad would say, “sometimes you want to lose it and sometimes you want to conserve it;” Uh huh, yeah..they really mess my straight, fine hair up in ways I don’t like to think about. Besides this was advice from the man who says his hat is cutting off the circulation to his head?! However, as you get older you realize that the war between vanity and sensibility is either easier to blur.. or maybe its clearer to see. Hell, what I mean is that a hat began to make more sense to me.
I would have never worn a switchman’s cap unless forced, which I was a few times, but when I married a whole new world opened up to me. Among the many strange and foreign items and ideas my husband brought to the union, was the presence of tens, no maybe hundreds or thousands of gimme baseball caps. Well, okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, it probably got into the thousands once my sons came on board. Of my three sons, Jake was the one whose cap was as much a part of his adult identity as anything I recall. He rarely left home without it. Among those thousands of hats lies a dedicated cap wearer’s mentality where only two things are important; shopping for the best one he has yet to buy and maintaining the evolving character of his current favorite. Men take to the sweat and the dirt and the folds and crease of their cap to heart; they’re like the maturing lines and creases of good pair of jeans. A good palm reader could probably tell you more about a man by looking at his hat rather than his palm. Certainly, for the men in my life who wear them, I can hold their hats in my hands and feel almost as connected as holding their hand.
Jake tended to the low-profile baseball cap, and not knowing this distinction he described to me the less stiff and low crown. He frequently rolled the brim nicely, between his palms, his hat and the brim a frame to face the sun. I think Jake also liked his army-issued ‘kepi’, structured much like his grandfather’s railroad grey one and in an odd quirk of soul or genes, he shifted it on his head just like his grandfather did the switchman’s version. There was a constant fight with Jake and his grandmother, she washed her husband’s and she saw no reason not to do the same for her grandson. It took a while and she never relented in principle, but Jake’s hats hang in a favored place, creased, worn and scented, a testament to the joy he had in wearing them.
Well there is one thing left about hats to discuss and that’s something I have seen many men do, from the Mexican man with his sombrero to a soldier laying up against his backback in the middle of the desert with his helmet to my Jake whenever he wanted to block the world out – that is the use of the hat, pulled low down, a means for sleep or thinking. Lithe body, lounging in a seat, Jake would draw the cap or hat down and down over eyes, until resting atop his face, laying back, he would make a private place, blocking out light and interruption, until the cap is adjusted back in it’s usual place, signifying he was back in the world. I have seen his brothers and father do the same.
I had my favorite cap, my tennis one that a friend of Jake’s gave me on my plane ride over here. It stands for my sons. It’s a low profile with Josh’s brass crossed cannons on the crown and a cross I hope to add that will remind me of John. In need of some private solace on a plane where too many people sit arm to arm in the intimacy of sleep, I pulled the cap low down over my eyes, adjusting in my seat the world around me retreating. I closed my eyes and prepared to gain the stillness and peace that I had seen in men who took this repose. Through slitted eyed, I saw the world drawn in, and took in a deep breath. My eyes flew wide open, stifling a cough, I jerked the hat off my face and sat up. The smell of old, dried sweat, dirt, mixed with naturally greasy hair odor and soured sunscreen ripe in my nose, I made a decision. Some experiences are not meant to cross gender boundaries.
