What's up with feed caps?
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
So, when was the last time you saw a country man outside, in Marion County, without a hat on? What's the deal? Are they born with them?
"Almost," a neighbor laughed, "I've got a picture of my little boy still in diapers with his dad's cowboy hat on."
Hat-wearing is such a common occurrence in the country that the term "a farmer's tan," (which I do know means that the top half of your face is white because it's shaded by the hat while the bottom half is brown) was coined. I also realize that sometimes you don't recognize a man in church on Sunday when he's got his hat off — and his hair all combed.
"Who is that?" asked Paula, our part-time postmistress, "pointing to a picture on our office wall. "I've never seen HIM without his hat on!"
"How does this hat phenomena happen," I asked Paula. After all, she's lived in the country all of her life.
"I guess it's because men wear feed caps and little boys start wearing them, too," she says. "They start out young."
"And you'd better NOT walk into the John Deere place with a International hat on either," adds another informant, "unless you want to spur on the competition and see if they'll give you one, too."
Hats are a country trademark. Through the years, it seems to me that the only thing that's changed with this hat-wearing business is the style of hats worn. In my father's era, it was straw hats they used for protection from the glaring heat. Then it became almost a blue-collar stigma. Dad was quick to trade in the straw hat for a dress hat befitting a preacher.
My grandpa Schubert, a small dapper man with a handlebar mustache, loved wearing a huge black cowboy hat. It became his trademark — the hat almost wider than the man.
These days, it's feed caps. In the city they call them baseball caps; but in the country they bear the mark of their maker — Stilh, John Deere
"And they don't blow off in the wind," says Benny, always the practical man.
I was remembering our trip to California — like a journey into another time zone. "When we get on the plane for California, you've got to leave that cap off," we instructed Tim. "Unless they are going to a ball game, guys just don't wear caps in California — we want you to blend in," we laughed at the notion, but Tim cooperated, even if it about killed him. He did pack the cap in his suitcase, just in case. After all, that hat was protection, it was better than sunglasses to cut the glare, and it was a shield from sunburn. And we were asking the supreme sacrifice — take it off?
"He should have left it on," says Mary Alice, "in fact, EVERYBODY should be wearing a hat these days for protection from the sun."
Well, it's another day in the country and while I don't see all that many women with hats on, perhaps we'd better start a trend. I'm gonna get me one of those feed caps.
