Brother Mark found a bunch of Dad’s hats in the top shelf of the guest room a few weeks ago. Some were in the original boxes.
We’re not hat people
I put out the word to family members that they were available, but, as Mark’s photo shows, you have to have a certain flair to pull off wearing a hat these days. We’re missing that gene.
We set the hats aside for future consideration by Niece Laurie of Annie Laurie’s Antiques.
Kitty Ruessler hat exhibit
I was watching Cape Girardeau County History Center Director Carla Jordan working on an exhibit of hats loaned by Kitty Ruessler the other night. I casually mentioned Dad’s hats to her, and she suggested we display those, too.
Dad’s hat’s
She found a hat rack and made them look good. I was amazed at how they were still in good shape. Dad died in 1977, and I’m sure they hadn’t been touched since then except to shove them in a corner in the closet.
Carla and her staff have done a great job of building unusual exhibits in the short time the History Center has been open. You should stop by. It’s across the street from the county courthouse in Jackson, in the old Andrew Jackson building. It’s open seven days a week. The hours are 10 – 4, Monday through Saturday, and 1 to 4 on Sunday.
Dad could wear a hat
Dad spent most of the week pushing dirt around building roads and bridges, but he cleaned up nicely.
Photo gallery of Dad and his hats
Some of the older pictures were taken when I was about two years old, when Dad, Mother and her parents piled into a car and headed off to Mexico and the American Southwest. One shot, which includes Wife Lila, was taken at Christmastime in Athens, Ohio. I took the two color pictures in 1961ish.
Click on any photo to make it larger, then use the arrow keys to move around the gallery.
My mom has been gone over 4 years and I still have her hats and the boxes and some of the stories she wrote about them. I can’t seem to let them go even though I was not a wearer of hats. She never left home without one whether it be to church or fishing!
Janet, stop in at the History Center in Jackson. I bet Carla Jordan could find a good home for them.
i don’t have the hat gene either…I just look like a dork in a real hat, pork pie or bowler or Top hat…I still look like dork. I can and do wear a baseball cap…but it still not hat…just cap.
Thank you, Ken.
My dad and uncles were all hat men back in the 50′ and 60’s. I still like the look, the wide brimmed dress hats. I have a couple of Stetson dress beaver felt hats that I wear in the winter and of course several cowboy hats, a Colorado thing.
Southeast Missouri males covered their heads far longer than those in other areas. The Buckner-Ragsdale stores sold more hats, particularly Stetsons & Dobbs, than any other in the Midwest including Famous and Stix.
In the 50s & early 60s my Dad owned Parisian Cleaners at 510 Broadway and he cleaned and blocked hats, with diminishing returns, as they disappeared in style. When the shop was relocated, he tossed out all the wooden “blocks”; to my chagrin, as they are now a desired item in the antique market.
Dad used to say he’d have had a fortune if he hadn’t burned up all the wooden nail kegs when they were empty.
Your father was very handsome. He looked a lot like Frank Sinatra in a couple of these!
He got his good looks from me.
Ken, A comment to a comment you made. Your father was obviously a man of manual labor, but when it came time to “dress up” he became a man of impeccable taste. I suppose he got that from you too. Too bad more man do not dress for the occasion anymore.
I am sorry to say that I am a blue jeans guy. I own a suit, but there’s no way I could fit in it, and, with luck, I’ll have no reason to until my soon-to-be-11-year-old-grandson gets married, and even then I may not go suit shopping.
I always hated to dress up. Dad, on the other hand, could look like a million bucks.
My mother worked in the millinery dept at Buckner ragsdale and I can remember the top of her closet being filed with boxes of hats labeled and the floor of it filled with boxes of labeled hi-heels. She was known as one of the best dressed women in cape. Wish I had some of those hats, very fashionable