With keeping them. I’ve left ‘em
in restaurants, on airplanes
-never to see them again.
Nice ones, genuine
Irish tweed, flat caps
or sometimes called
driving caps. Maybe
because they are
less likely to blow off
your head? In Ireland
they call them paddy caps,
in Scotland it’s a bunnet,
in Wales it’s a Dal cap.
They are iconic for golfers
or longshoremen, cabbies,
cartoon burglars.
I like them because they’re
practical and they mostly
stay on your head when
it’s windy. Until they don’t.
Like a month ago in Barcelona,
it was extremely windy and as I
crossed a six-lane boulevard
at Placa de Catalunya,
a gust snatched my cap
right off my head and
sent it rolling out into
the intersection.
As I stood there
watching it roll and
cars, busses and bicycles
bearing down on it, I thought
oh no, not another one gone,
I just replaced the last one I lost.
Before I could step out into
the speeding traffic, a woman
restrained me, senor! senor!
and she dashed into the street
and retrieved it. I guess she knew
what she was doing and suspected
(rightly) that I didn’t.
I have other hats, they are for
various functions and occasions:
a midnight blue fedora
is my Sunday-go-to-church hat
and a light woven straw version
for hot sunny climates,
an Indiana Jones style
Australian bush hat for rainy days
and various knit caps for cold days.
It is customary to remove your hat
during the national anthem
and when inside a church.
I’ve been gently reprimanded
in French and Spanish churches
if I forget to take mine off.
Only the priest wears a hat,
a biretta, or a saturno, a mitre
for bishops and cardinals.
The skullcap is a zucchetto,
only worn by popes, cardinals,
bishops and abbots.
It looks somewhat like a kippah,
or yarmulke which Jewish men are supposed
to wear in a synagogue or during prayer.
I was given a paper one when
I prayed at the Wailing Wall.
What I don’t have (except for one)
is the so-called baseball cap.
Which are of course adorned
with the logo of baseball teams.
Or golf ball companies,
automobile logos, political slogans;
almost anything one wishes
to shout, announce, or endorse.
I do have one with Ferrari on it
I got it to shield my face at the
Mexico City Grand Prix. It’s not that
I hate them, it’s just that they are so
ubiquitous. And there are the pretentious
ways of wearing them? Like white guys
wearing them backwards so they can look
more “street”? And do they take them off
in a church? Nope, might as well be glued
to their heads.
They seem to be popular with women joggers,
a ponytail hanging out the back
swinging like a pendulum is kind of cute.
There is one baseball-style cap
I used to have, the one hat I most
regret having lost. It’s actually what
the Army calls a fatigue cap. A olive drab
cotton cap with a wide bill. This one
had belonged to my best friend
in the Army, Jim Brown. It was an old style
cap from the fifties, and he decided
that he wanted the standard seventies
issue cap. So we traded because I liked
the oldstyle better. His cap had his name
and social security number inked inside.
So for years, whenever I wore it, I’d look
inside and remember Jim. Somehow we
got in touch over the years, he once tracked
me down in San Rafael, sent a letter asking
if I was the on who had served in Germany
twenty-five years before. He was still in the Army,
they had sent him to college and he got
a PhD in European history and worked
for NATO as an advisor. Made it from Private
to Lieutenant Colonel. Said I should
apply to work as a contractor. Really, Jim?
After my discharge from the Army
for conscientious objection, my subsequent
association with Maoists and anarchists?
He said, yeah, we need all kinds,
different points of view are not a problem.
Last I heard from him were emails
from his latest assignment, as a liason officer
between the US Embassy in Tel Aviv
and the Israeli Defense Force. Then
about eight years ago, I got a message
on his email account from his wife.
Jim had died of a heart attack in Tel Aviv.
I wonder what Jim would be doing now,
what would he be advising about
the war in Gaza? I wish I had that
hat, maybe it would have some answers.
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