Exercise Wednesday: The Hat
Imagine if you saw something, a hat let’s say. You were sitting, just letting your mind wander and you saw a memorable hat. It doesn’t have to be a hat like the super-amazing magnificent hat in the great literary classic Go, Dog, Go.
In fact, a plainer hat would probably be more interesting. For instance, the hat displayed below is a Brooklyn Dodgers hat I wear to exercise. As you might notice, I sweat a bit when I exercise. But this hat might be interesting if you were to just find it without knowing my backstory for it.
For one thing, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles 54 years ago. That means someone wearing a Dodgers hat must (1) be old enough to remember and idolize the team as it existed before the move, (2) have no understanding about the logo on the hat or (3) be an annoying baseball geek like me.
For another, that’s a lot of sweat in that hat. The State of New York is actually bidding on that hat because there’s enough salt to clear the roads for three weeks. Maybe it’s an exercise hat. Or maybe it’s a work hat. Or maybe it’s a hat someone wears walking cross-country to raise money for something.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write about the origin of this hat (or another distinctive item of your choosing). Time limit: 25 minutes.
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“Hey, when did the Red Sox drop red from their hat?”
“What?”
Ruth knows nothing about baseball and wears it like a badge of honor sometimes. How could the Red Sox remove Red from their uniforms? That would be like the Cleveland Browns wearing purple.
“That’s a Red Sox hat. I recognize the B from the pictures in your magazine.” She was walking along the rock wall toward the hat, which was tipped forward on one of the rocks about twenty feet in front of us.
“You mean Sports Illustrated.”
“The one with all the naked ladies right after the Super Bowl each year.”
The naked ladies are the swimsuit models and if they were really naked–completely naked–the damned magazine wouldn’t make it to my mailbox. As it was, I was surprised it made it there now. Cheryl Tiegs might be old, but she was hot.
I’d never seen Cheryl Tiegs boobs, though. I’d seen Ruth’s on a dare one weekend when we’d dipped into her father’s stash of schnapps. I return, I had to take off my pants. We both stayed like that for half an hour, then put our clothes back on.
“Where do you think the hat came from?
“Don’t know. What’s all the white stuff on it?”
I hopped ahead of her on the stone fence, risking a broken ankle to get between her and the hat. I’d heard her talk about gallantry and decided that I wanted to be galant. She liked gallant. “Sweat ring. Whoever wore this worked pretty hard.”
“It’s a Red Sox hat, right?
I smiled at her. She didn’t know jack about baseball, but she knew other things and she was fun to be with. “It’s the Dodgers. Brooklyn Dodgers.”
“They play in Los Angeles. I know because their had looks like it says T-L-A…true love always.” She turned to me and batted her eyelashes.
I smiled back. The talk about true love made me feel anxious and secure at the same time. Marriage was a long way off. Graduation was a long way off.
“I think that belongs to Howard Walker. I’ve seen him wearing it when he works on the tractor. He said his uncle played for the Dodgers in the mid-1950s. Last name was Bessent. They’re haying now. I surpised he’s–” I stopped short.
“What is it?”
In front of me, just on the other side of the wall, behind a group of trees, I saw Mr. Bessent’s body. It was a ling time before I could push it from my mind’s eye.