"You saved me once, and what is given is always returned. We are in this life to help one another.” Carlo Collodi (The Adventures of Pinocchio)
I own a fair number of hats. I’m not a hat collector, exactly, but over the years I have simply acquired a collection of hats and caps that have made the coat closet a hazard-zone.
My father always told me to use my head for something other than a hat-rack, and yet I find that has always been one of its most useful features. God gave many people loads of hair, but since he gave me a head so perfect it needs to be exposed to the world, I’ve found it necessary to cover it when I go outside.
Wearing a hat is such a habit that I don’t even go to the mailbox without donning my chapeaux, come rain, shine, blowing snow, or the gloomy gray of cloudy day.
I’m no fashion maven, but I do tend to ponder which hat to wear on occasions that find me venturing out of doors. During cooler months, I tend to wear my woolen Stetson as it keeps my head toasty warm. In the warmer months I switch off to my other Stetson, which has a mesh lining with some sort of mosquito repellant (it says). Talk about a buzz-kill!
I have found hats with full brims are a nuisance when driving as the back of the hat brushes the head-rests, tipping the caps down over my eyes while I drive. Now, that does keep the sun out of my peepers better than the car’s visors, but it also limits my ability to see the road, traffic, pedestrians, or other stuff of which an attentive driver like me needs to see, so for driving I almost always switch Stetsons out for a baseball cap.
I don’t know why they are called baseball caps, though, as I have a multitude of sports emblems affixed to my hats. My caps cover baseball, football, and hockey major league teams (multiples of each, for what else can friends and family buy for birthdays and Christmas each year for the dude that has everything?), as well as a few college teams. I tend to wear the cap according to the season and who’s playing that day or week.
I also have work-hats. I’ve got one real ratty floppy cap I like to wear when gardening. It has a cord that hangs under the chin that you can cinch up when it gets windy. My beloved partner absolutely hates the hat and is embarrassed for me to be seen in public with it, but not enough to ask me not to work in the yard.
We compromise, of course, because that’s what lovers do for one another. I just wear it in the back yard where the privacy fence keeps me out of sight of all the neighbors except those directly behind us. Their house is on a higher elevation, but they solved that problem by putting blinds up around their deck so neither of us can see the other when we’re in our backyards.
“Love your neighbor,” says Jesus. I guess privacy fences and blinds has that rule covered, eh?
Finally, because we live in a region that is prone to bouts of cold weather, I also have a variety of knit caps to keep head and ears all toasty warm when the weather gets cold enough to set Frosty the Snowman to shivering. Some of my knitwear has pompoms while others don’t. Some include team logos, while others are a plain and solid sort; the rest have designs knitted into them.
As I’ve been doing this mental inventory of head-wear, it occurs to me that I do have more caps than heads, so I am truly in need of thinning out my collection. That will be a major goal in 2025.
As we put 2024 to bed and ring in 2025, I hope that you, too, will all find things to do that will keep you happy and warm in 2025 and beyond. With that, I’ll bid every one of you, with a tip o’ my hat: Have a good day and a Happy New Year wherever you are here in this, our valley!
Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)
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