Saturday, April 19, 2014

What ever happened to hats?


It's almost Easter --- and I've been working with a lot of historic images lately. Which has caused me to wonder, what ever happened to hats? Cowboy hats, baseball caps, stocking caps and sunshades don't count.

This is one of my favorite images from the Lucas County Historical Society collection --- five young men in a boat (perhaps on the Chariton River, perhaps not). All of them are wearing hats. If you look carefully, you'll see that there's another guy fishing in the distance. I'm betting he was wearing a hat, too.

The woman underneath the hat at left is Alma Clay, veteran educator for whom Chariton's long-vanished Alma Clay School was named. And the hats below are towering over my grandmother (left), Jessie (Brown) Miller, and her niece, Ida (Brown) Rogers.


In a way, you can understand why women don't wear hats any more --- some of them were the size of small pets and look as if they'd require about as much maintenance. And where would you store the things?

More men below --- the grim aftermath on the Chariton square of a coyote hunt. All the men, again, wearing hats.


Here's the challenge. Look around Easter Sunday --- a day once renowned for its Easter bonnets --- and find me a hat atop one person --- just one. Betcha can't.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

You haven't met Bes Jones, who lives at Southgate apartments. She wears some beautiful hats. I see her on Sunday at church and call her "the Hat Lady"!

Unknown said...

type error and mot proof read, her name is Bea Jones. Not Bes.

Unknown said...

I wear a lovely chartreuse colored hat on Easter. I do love a good hat.