Back in ‘68 I attended a funeral for a friend, as I had hand made an exquisite, pearlescent white casket for his deceased daughter Angelina. I had spent sometime hand crafting a carriage of the finest calibre, purple silk lined – scented and decorated with frangipani, for her passing into a better world.
Her untimely end was a tragedy, an utter tragedy, and that’s a story in itself and one to rival that of Shakespeare’s Juliet and no less sorrowfull – it seemed as though a river of tears were cried on this day…
After the sorrow of the service, I said my goodbyes, made my way back to my car, and journeying home decided to stop for a stiff drink, a highball, or maybe an aged Islay Lagavulin at the Nobody Inn in Diddiscombleigh.
I set my self up in the saloon, ordered a double and was about to light a cuban cigar when I noticed, hanging upon the finial of the chair one of the strangest hats I had ever witnessed. I was about to pick it up when a disheveled and curled up old man came bowling in from the public bar, fixed me with a steely eye, and grinned a sly tombstone filled excuse for a smile revealing as he did, his amber teeth be-streaked with tobacco, tar and a dark, foaming stout.
“Oh, is that your hat?” I asked peevishly…
The Stranger:
“Yea… it is, most certainly, mine…”
Charlie Underwood:
“I could never wear a hat like that. It’s rather strange, is it a…”
The Stranger:
“Ha, Well I gotta mustard yellow broad brim top hat but it ain’t fit for public consumption…”
Charlie Underwood:
“Well I`ll tell you about my old hat…
The Stranger:
“Wait, I’ll tell yer ’bout mine first, you see,
“Once I had a hat for a whole twenty years; a trilby in style, light tanned felt, with white striped band; with a blue feather, a peacocks feather!
I loved that hat `twas my pride and joy I tell ya!
When I bought it I run out inta the road, turned it upside down and pushed out the creases so as it had a nice tall, rounded top, like a kind of derby hat, then threw it on the dust and stamped on it several…ripped the band off…any good hat needs some serious wear and tear, dontcha think ? You have to kick it up and down the road, till it just lays there lookin` all furtive and ready for the wearing….”
I looked down and observed The Stranger’s misshapen boots, they were obviously the Family Boots, passed from father to son and so on, and so on – ad infinitum – well, or so I thought. THEN, he suddenly grabbed my wrist, took hold of my cigar, sucked on it like a drowning man, exhaled a cloud of thick dirty smoke and continued with his story….
“Anyways the salesman well he thought I was as mad as a box of frogs and so did my dear old mother. She HATED it. Hated it with the vengeance of a pygmy! Anyway after around twenty years a-wearing the old treasure she offered me a new wheelbarrow and a hundred pounds for the hat, so figurin’ I could use the barrow and drink the rest I gave in and took the dough – I was fair skint back then I tell you’s.
“…” I couldnt get a word in edgeways…
Anyways, long after the shine o’ the coin had gone from my pocket I was in the attic huntin mice when I discovers she never threw it out and next day I figured to get that hat back out of the attic, out of the dusty old loft. Needless, it was like meeting an old friend from way back.
I sipped my Lagavulin, considered the wasted stump of my cigar and wondered exactly when, or if the stranger had ever, or last encountered a warm bath or shower.
Well, time goes by and she caught me out wearing it around town one day and she threatened to cut it in two, she was on fire about it, especially after the deal with the moolah. I pleaded and pleaded like a convicted man waitin for the gallows, pleaded for the hat`s life; got down on my knees like a preacher. BUT…..
She was ADMANT!
The hat had to go.
“BUT What about Lars?” I asked;
He`d always been one to love that hat, liked the tattered brim and the dogteeth pattern on the lining. I mean it had a hatmaker stamp an’ all from up town in London. Even offered me his favourite sow for it too! Finally after I was yelling like the devil for an hour, cussing and shouting profanities, about saving the hats life we struck ourselves a deal: I didn’t forfeit the money, Lars became the sole beneficiary, took the hat back to his lodgings and everyone was HAPPY, dontcha know.
He drained his handle of stout and unceremoniously dumped it onto the bar, banging it three times like a judge his gavel…
“Nobby…?” He howled like an old dog bayin at the moon; “Nobby..more stout Nobby!”
Few years passed by and I hadn`t seen old Lars for awhile and I`d never come across another hat that I really liked, hats were disappearing. Sometimes I thought it might be the aliens or even the wolves out on Bodmin….but people started worrying about their hair and other crazy modernistic stuff like that. Lars said he was going back to Canada were things were “hunky dory”.
AS I heard it, his mother picked him up from the railroad station…
“Where did you get that disgusting hat?” She asked.
Old tightlipped Lars; he never even gave her the courtesy of an answer.
And, SHE, the sly old fox never said nothing else about it.
No matter – he was gonna wear that hat of mine come rain or shine.
SO winter comes along and with it the evenings drawing in. The snow started in to settling on the top of the mountain and the creek with a thin veil of ice on its surface, so, Shaky Harry brought the medicine round and up from the still, and soon, soon after on the last January weekend Willow George Blackfeet, the half-indian, brought the lumber for the range and the fire. Things were startin’ to look mighty fine..but then the Devil played his hand so to speak.
Well you see, in the winter it was mighty hard to keep a hand steady at the mill and day previous Lars cuts his hand in the small bandsaw at the mill. God did that hurt him bad, badder than a shot wound so he leaves that hat at home thinking he just couldn’t see past the brim, nor adjust it properly one handed, and he sure dint wanta go losing a whole hand `specially not least in the cold season. It was looking just like a piece of old gristle, chewed up and nasty, like a piece of tough fat that even the old dog Byron wouldn’t try an’ eat.
Anyway Lars comes back home that night, expectin’ pork and beans ready on the table and Mama in the rocking chair, BUT , he only smleed the whiff of something queer!
“Oh sweet jesus and son…of…a…bitch; Mother what have you done?” he whispered to the God up in the ceiling and sat right on down and tried to arm himself up with the sharp knife and a spoon.
He was hellish hungry, like a coyote drunk-wild on the trail of a wholesome, one legged turkey.
…there it was, smoking gently, toasting like a piglet, gently, over the fire – the HAT!
He was a proper good ole mate though cause, you know, no matter how damn hungry and famished with the cold he was, he just couldn`t bring himself down to eat it though, not like his sour old Mother, with her lips smacking and tuckin` right in with a big grin on her face. And that’s how I came to get this new ‘un’ see…it was a brand spanker and awful fine back in the day…
…he snapped up the dirty old thing, pulled it down over his ears and passed out, albeit, in a very, casual and dusty way beside the roaring fire…
Of course in those days a man could lose his life over a drap of old rhye and Obadiah’s refusal to make an affordable casket was not to be taken lightly…A specialist could oft be found swinging from the nearest oak if the general consensus judged his work a touch on the expensive side of a little too costly. Still, he was not one to bow to no man’s code nor another’s inferior manufacture or material design - ‘Badiah, did what he usually had to do; he upped sticks and left town.
Anyway this Obadiah was a superstitious man and he always carried about his person a Smith and Wesson model 3 and his deceased father’s glass eye which he said “could look deep in the future”.
I commandeered a leaky bucket of a sailboat tub named the “Tyranena” and endeavoured to cross the Black Sea. Well , that’s another adventure altogether, and to cut a long story short I entered safely, disguised as a Latvian aristocrat into the Persian Court carrying the sacred Gathas tablets, and into the favour of the Shah. It was here in the Crimson Court of the King, that I learnt the sacred recipe of the holy pomegranate and the golden chicken…
