Hat Trick

 

This is my favorite picture of my mother and father. She was 19, he was 24, they were newlyweds, young and in love, and dressed to the nines! Check out her outfit. Check out her hat!

 

The Hat of My Mother

Earlier this year my longtime friend Paula Bennett-Paddick sent me a short story she thought I would like titled “The Hat of My Mother” by Max Steele. She knows me well. It’s a wistful little period piece about a mother’s troubled trip to buy a hat.

In many ways it reminded me of another favorite short story of mine, Wendell Berry’s “Nearly to the Fair,” also set in the thirties and also about a thwarted journey.

“The Hat of My Mother” made me think of my mother's hats, of which she had many. But even more it made me think of her hat boxes, which were stylish in themselves. I remember them better than I do the hats. She must have had nine or ten hats and a shelf in an upstairs closet just for her hat boxes. (My mother was a very stylish woman.)

Every Sunday she would carefully select the appropriate hat to match her outfit. We couldn’t leave for church until Mother had her hat placed carefully atop her hair, bobby-pinned to hold it in place.

I don’t think every woman in Kingsport in the fifties had ten hats but my mother had an advantage over most women. My father worked at Penney’s so she got a discount.

I can still hear Mrs. Minnie Kizer, the Penney’s elevator operator, calling out, “Second floor, Layaway, Ready to Wear, Alterations, Ladies’ Hats.”

I found a story in a 1950 edition of the Kingsport Times about Kingsport women in the fifties and their hats.

 Kingsport Times, Sunday August 13, 1950

By ELEANOR DIVINE

Why do the ladies of Kingsport have an antipathy toward wearing hats?

Walk down the street any day and scan the horizons. Few hats are in sight.

Even if you do glimpse a woman sporting a chapeau, chances are she is from out of town. Many Johnson City ladies go to town equipped with both hats and gloves. So do Bristol shoppers.

But Kingsport women just won't wear hats.

However city milliners say that doesn't stop the ladies from buying hats. Revealing a strange paradox, the merchants hail greater bonnet sales than ever before. At the same time they admit in bewilderment that women consistently shun wearing them in town.

Saleswomen shake their heads. "Even we don't wear them to work," they admit shamefacedly.

"Every well-dressed woman should wear a hat to and from her job,” says Mrs. Tina Anderson, J. C. Penney milliner. "But no one else does it. How can we?”

Mrs. D. L. Marion, J. Fred Johnson hat department, agrees. "Many customers have told me they would like to include this important accessory in their casual costume, but they won't because none of the other ladies will."

This vicious circle is but another example of the “all we like sheep" attitude of fashion slaves which men deplore and scorn. Those who want to be chapeau wearers bow to the will of those who don't.

How can those who really don't like to wear hats be distinguished from the ones who don't simply because of the others?

It all boils down to dividing Kingsport women into two opposing camps—the Bonnet-ists and the Anti-Bonnet-ists.

Some of the more militant Bonnet-ists are proposing a "Hat Day" or "Hat Week” to set aside headgear donning for downtown.

But there are some Anti-Bonnet-ists who would never submit. Among them are the type who will not purchase a hat for an occasion less than a wedding or funeral!

Mrs. Anderson quotes an old refrain of her customers. "I never buy a hat unless I have to. I have to get this one for a wedding, but I know I'll never use it again."

A Parks-Belk hatter, Miss Betty Walters, says the women complain, "I know I'll only wear this hat once. I buy hats and then stick them in the closet after one time."

The men's angle is seen in Parks-Belk manager John K. Arrington's reply. "Women only put on hats for dress-up occasions. That they avoid wearing them isn't because they don't have any." Adding that sales show an increase instead of slump, he says, "They have hats; they simply don't wear -them."

Shrugging their shoulders, many are at a loss for reasons Kingsport’s feminine population scorn of covering their heads for down town wear.

"I think it must be a small-town habit," one sighs, "although women in other nearby towns dress in them for shopping."

Another says resignedly, "Women here are simply more casual dressers – especially in summer weather when it's so much easier just to run downtown hatless."

Penney's Ladies' Hats ad from 1941

Miss Bertha Peoples of Fuller and Hillman has another idea. "It's these young teen-agers," she asserted. "The younger people are particularly reluctant to wear hats, although some college girls go for them." The girls who are just beginning to wear dress-up outfits go into millinery departments, try on hats, look in the mirror, and giggle in ridicule at their reflections. But they buy the hats. Stores continue to herald booming chapeau business here in spite of the contrary ladies’ disinclination for covering their craniums.

With the introduction of many new modes in head wear, from the beanie to the babushtka, sales have been steadily climbing. Local merchants agree with trade magazines which report prosperity, unblemished except for a recent hue and cry caused when Margaret Truman abandoned hats for a scarf over her head this Easter.

Straw Boaters

 

Daddy's straw boater

My father wore hats. In my lifetime he only wore fedoras, usually gray or green. But he wore them almost every day.

But in his younger days, he styled a straw boater (see above photo). Many men in the thirties and forties in Kingsport did. 

I’ve never been a hat guy. But there was a brief period in junior high when I wore a hat, a straw Panama hat, that I hoped would make me cool. Of course it didn’t work. Even loaning it to my dance partner – see photo – didn’t help. She looked cool. I looked like a dork.

I don’t see straw hats much anymore. But there was a time, as I recounted in this column in 2013:

 

Straw Hat Day was a big day – at least for haberdashers – for almost a century.

Straw Hat Day was popular when, well, hats were popular.

I’d never heard of Straw Hat Day until I stumbled across a half page ad in a 1929 edition of the Times News for “Straw Hat Day.” Then I started digging around and found ads for Straw Hat Day as early as 1889 (in a Syracuse newspaper). The last time Straw Hat Day was “celebrated” in Kingsport was apparently in 1966.

Straw Hat Day in 1929 was May 1st but it bounced around on the calendar, sometimes occurring as early as April 24th and other years as late as May 15th.

“Keep in Step with Style and Wear a Straw on May Day,” the 1929 ad advised. The sponsors were J.C. Penney, Parks-Belk, Fuller’s, J. Fred Johnson, J.C. Cope Clothing, Cooper Bros. and The Acorn Store, all of whom just happened to have a nice new selection of straw hats for spring.

Why a Straw Hat Day?

It started out as a comfort issue and turned into a fashion issue.

Straw hats were supposed to be cooler in summer.

Just as women weren’t supposed to wear white until after Memorial Day, so too were men supposed to keep their straw boaters in the closet until Straw Hat Day. Then they could put away the felt fedoras until fall.

I have to admit I haven’t owned a straw hat since a Panama number that I thought was high fashion when I was a teenager. (The song “Pink Shoelaces” was a hit at the time with the line, “And a big Panama with a purple hat band.”)

Straw hats went away because hats in general went away. Some blame President John Kennedy for that, because he didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration and in general eschewed the hat.

But as Neil Steinberg points out in his book “Hatless Jack,” “Dress-hat sales did not tank after Kennedy's inauguration. They had tanked long before - decades before. The peak year for men's hat manufacture in the United States was 1903, a year that also saw a widespread hatless fad. By the mid-1920s, hatlessness was a major problem for the industry, which was in a free fall by the late 1940s and early 1950s. Men's dress-hat sales in the United States in 1960 were half of what they had been a decade earlier.”

So the reason we don’t have a Straw Hat Day in Kingsport or anywhere anymore isn’t because straw hats have fallen out of favor, it’s that hats have fallen out of favor.

If we had a Hat Day now it would be Ball Cap Day, the day when you switch from your winter solid ball cap to your summer mesh.

 

 

 Cowboy Hats

Bat Masterson

 Back when the West was very young,

There lived a man named Masterson.

He wore a cane and derby hat,

His name was Bat, Bat Masterson.

-- Theme from the TV show “Bat Masterson”

 Ignoring the lyric about “wore a cane,” the TV series Bat Masterson (1958-1961) may have been the most accurate portrayal of cowboy millinery.

Cowboys, or most of them anyway, didn’t wear what my generation thinks of as a cowboy hat. Those wide-brimmed, high crowned chapeaus – the ten-gallon hat - would have been unwieldy on the open range, always blowing off.

Bat Masterson’s derby hat may have made him look like a bit of a dandy on TV but he fit right in in the Old West.

Check out this famous photo of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch Gang (Butch, real name Robert Leroy Parker, is front row, far right. The Sundance Kid, real name Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, is front row, far left). No Stetsons, all Bowlers (derby hats).

According to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, “Cowboys rarely fought Indians, they were more likely to die from falling off a horse than in a gunfight, and they didn’t wear those tall, wide-brimmed cowboy hats you see in Westerns. Most photographs from that time feature men wearing bowler hats and one of the reasons they were popular is because they stayed on in windy conditions.”

So Bat Masterson wasn’t a dandy, he was a typical Old West denizen.

And as for “he wore a cane,” there are no photographs of Masterson carrying a cane. He apparently did carry a cane, a result of a – what else? – gun shot injury.

As for his reputation as a gunfighter, that may be on the money. He was reputed to have shot to death 26 men by the age of 26.

He downplays that number but still fesses up to quite a few gun fights in this profile from the Kansas City Journal of Nov. 24, 1881.

(After a long-winded introduction that said, in short, there were many gun-fighters walking the streets and populating the pews of Kansas City, the correspondent got to the interview.)

 BAT'S BULLETS.

Bat Matteson is Referred to

Some of his More Tragical Exploits.

The iron-clad reporter of the Journal met the famous H. B. Masterson, of Dodge City-known, by those whom he has not shot, as “Bat" Masterson. Mr. Masterson (it is well to be respectful) was met at the door of a Main street restaurant about 8 o'clock last evening. He was in company with Mr. H. E. Gryden, prosecuting attorney of Dodge City. An introduction all around followed, and the reportorial magnet was applied to Mr. Masterson to draw out whatever reminiscence he was willing to relate of his crusade in the interests of law and order. It may be well first to describe Mr. Masterson's appearance.

He is a medium sized man, weighing perhaps 150 pounds, and reaching five feet nine inches in height. His hair is brown, his rather small mustache is of the same tint, and his smooth-shaven cheeks plump and rosy. His eyes are blue, and gentle in expression, his attire modest but neat, and withal he is about as far removed in appearance from the Bowery frontiersman as one could well imagine. Strange as it may seem he is grave and quiet in demeanor, and polite to a fault. This latter characteristic was evidenced not only in his demeanor to the news man, but to an impertinent admirer (!) who wished him to go down the street and confine his attentions to him.

In answer to a very leading question, Masterson said he had not killed as many men as was popularly supposed, though he had “had a great many difficulties” and had in fact been tried four times for murder in the first degree and acquitted each time.

"How about shooting some Mexicans cutting off their heads and carrying the gory trophies back in a sack?"

"Oh, that story is straight, except that I did not cut off their heads,” replied Bob. He then related the account of the "affair,” which is in substance as follows:

A Mexican and his son became very troublesome in the camp where Bat was then sojourning. They were good shots, and always worked together. They had murdered many a miner, and relieved him of his outfit and dust. A reward of $500 was offered for their heads, and Masterson, both for the sake of the money and for the purpose of ridding the camp of their dreadful presence, concluded to annihilate them. Their cabin was in a little clearing in an almost inaccessible place in the mountains. Before daybreak one morning Masterson crept to the verge of the clearing with a rifle in his hands, Behind a bush he reclined on a blanket until sunrise, when the door of the cabin opened wide and the ugly visage of the old man protruded. The sharp black eyes swept the horizon, and the head was withdrawn. Before many minutes had elapsed, the head reappeared, followed by a body with a brace of pistols strapped around the waist, and a rifle resting on his shoulder. The old man was accompanied by his son, who was also fully armed. The old man was covered by Masterson's rifle over a path to and from a spring a hundred yards or so from the cabin at right angles. The father and son were conversing earnestly, seemingly unwilling to re-enter the cabin, before the door of which they stood for some time. Thirty minutes passed, which seemed hours to Masterson, before he could obtain what he considered a favorable shot. Finally the old man made a move which uncovered the son. Masterson took advantage of his opportunity, and the young man fell to rise no more. Before the smoke revealed from whence the shot come the old man was a corpse alongside of his boy.

On May 14, 1878, Masterson’s brother Ed was murdered in Dodge City. Ed had tried to arrest a man named Walker, for some offense, and had grappled with him, seizing him by both shoulders. Walker was known to be a dangerous man, and meanwhile a desperado named Wagner had come to the rescue. “Bat" heard of the trouble, and rushed to his brother's relief. Meanwhile an army of roughs had gathered to the rescue of Ed's prisoner and affairs looked dark Just then Bat arrived, and taking in the situation, he shouted "Ed, shove him away from you." At that moment Walker drew a pistol and shot Ed through the body, inflicting a wound from which he died in about fifteen minutes. Bat immediately began firing. His first bullet laid Walker low, his second struck Wagner in the breast and glanced around, inflicting a dangerous but not fatal wound. His third and fourth shots laid low two more of the mob, and three more were forever forbidden to come to Dodge City by Masterson. They walked out of town and never returned.

In April, 1881, Bat's second brother was killed in Dodge City by two men named Updegraff and Peacock. These men remarked after the killing: "The Mastersons were born to run.” Bat was then in Tombstone, Arizona, and was telegraphed of his brother's murder. Though eleven hundred miles away, he packed his grip and started for Dodge City. On his arrival he learned that one of the men had said "the Mastersons were born to run," and this infuriated him more even than the death of his brother. The story is related in a very few words. Bat Masterson shot Peacock and Updegraff dead, disproving, at least, the assumption that the Mastersons were born to run."

Regarding his exploit in Texas with the soldiers, Mr. Masterson was quite reticent. In answer to a direct question he said, "I had a little difficulty with some soldiers down there, but never mind, I dislike to talk about it," It is popularly supposed that he annihilated a whole regiment, and this belief is strengthened by the fact that there was an urgent call for recruits about that time. Only West Point graduates escaped, and being officers, they sought places of safety early in the engagement.

Alluding to the killing of Ed Masterson, Mr. Gryden said: The man walked some distance before he fell. I saw him coming, and in the darkness of the evening he seemed to be carrying a lighted cigar in his hand. I remarked to a friend that the cigar burned in a remarkably lively manner, but as the man drew near we saw that the fire was not at the end of a cigar but in the wadding of his coat. He fell dead at our feet.

Three years ago a gang of men attempted to rob a Santa Fe train near Dodge City. Bat, who was sheriff at that time, pursued them, and single handed and alone brought in three of the robbers at the muzzle of his revolver.”

H. B. Masterson, the subject of the above sketch, came to Kansas in 1869. He is now but twenty-seven years of age; so that he was a mere boy of fifteen when he reached the State. For a time, he shot buffalo for the government. In 1876 he was elected deputy marshal of Dodge City, and in 1878 sheriff of that county. He is a wonderful shot, and possesses the rare ability to shoot with equal precision with either hand. When he has a large audience to entertain, he crosses his wrists like a letter X, and enters the action firing with two revolvers at once.

Masterson leaves the city today, but returns in a few days and gives a brief sojourn here. Whether he has killed 26 men as popularly asserted, cannot be positively ascertained without careful and extensive research, for he is himself quite reticent on the subject. But that many men have fallen by his deadly revolver and rifle is an established fact, and he furnishes a rare illustration of the fact that the thrilling stories of life on the frontier are not always overdrawn.