The Hat: A Biography

In light of the recent death of our friend Gene, I thought this would be a nice story to tell.

Sometime between 1968 and ’69 Gene acquired a hat. Gene got The Hat from a friend of his. Who knows how long Gene’s friend had had it before Gene acquired it, but acquire it he did.

It was a black felt hat with a rounded crown and nice wide brim. It was the kind of hat one saw on the heads of Indians in those old Westerns.

When Gene got The Hat he punched the crown down, turning it into a hat that had more of cowboy look to it. He also added a simple three strand braided leather hat band. Into the band, on the left side, he added a couple of feathers, don’t remember what kind.

I coveted it terribly. Besides which it fit me perfectly and looked good on me. I pestered Gene until around 1970 he finally gave it to me. I pinned up the left side of the brim with an amethyst broach Grammy had given me. It was a cluster of leaves with a single large oval stone representing a flower bud. I still have the pin. The band and feathers remained the same.

I wore The Hat all the time.

In 1970 my senior high school class went to Caracas, Venezuela and Curacao. One day, while in Caracas (our visit there is a story in itself!) I was window shopping with a class mate. A man came running towards us, excited and speaking in Spanish which neither of us could understand. He pulled on our arms trying to get us to cross the street, pointing to another man standing in the door of a jewelry store. This second man was waving at us to cross the street.

We were naïve and stupid enough to comply. When I think back on that moment I realize we could have been kidnapped.

The up-shot was this: the man who pulled at our arms trying to get us to cross the street, had the shop owner translate. He had seen me in Curacao just a few days before and now, to see me in Caracas, was like a sign. He wanted to buy my hat. He kept making offers, but I kept politely refusing until he politely gave up. We all agreed it was truly amazing that he had spotted me on two occasions in two different locations, the second being such a huge city. What were the odds? It would be like someone seeing me in Bermuda then spotting me a few days later in New York City!

Later that same year, we four Denhams took a road trip. We flew up to Florida, bought a station wagon (the first and only Chrysler product Dad ever bought) and we drove out to California to visit Dad’s side of the family who lived around Clear Lake. While we were there Dad broke his foot. It was during this time that Mom, my sister Erva, and I went down to San Francisco and spent about a week exploring the city. All this time I’m wearing The Hat.

One day while walking through the city, Mom on one side of me, Erva on the other, a long-hair type (this is 1970, hippies were abundant) comes up to me, puts his hands on my shoulders and says very intently, “Your hat! I’ll give you anything for that hat!”

Of course I refused. He was polite enough and didn’t press too hard, but he was obviously disappointed when I wouldn’t give it up.

The Hat became a part of my costume. I wore it everywhere.

By 1980 The Hat was worn out. The inside sweat band had just about completely disintegrated, there were holes in the crown, and the brim was weak and thin from all the handling. But I couldn’t just throw it away, it meant too much to me.

In a tearful ceremony of farewell, I burned it. Little did I realize at the time I was also symbolically burning away a life-style I had out grown. The ashes of the old became fertilizer for the new ground I was just beginning to cultivate.

Thanks, Gene, for the memories.

This a newspaper picture taken the day we left on our class trip. It was taken by our class photographer, Les Francis, who is now a professional photographer, consequently, he isn’t in the picture. The ‘xed’ out person in the back is a stranger who did not belong in the shot. There I am squatting in the front row wearing The Hat.

I seem to be intently studying. I was in the school library when this picture was taken so it was study hall. It was also “free clothes day,” the last Friday of every month when juniors and seniors could wear street clothes instead of our uniform which was forest green and white. Mom made the outfit, a little short skirt and vest, from a mottled blue and white Merimekko fabric. The shirt was my favorite, a wonderful sort of pirate shirt, with buttoned cuffs that went nearly up to my elbows. Those earrings were stainless steel discs Dad gave me with holes drilled into them so I could link them together, there’s a third disc hidden behind the collar of my shirt. The binder was cloth covered in Stewart plaid. I am wearing rings on at least six of my fingers.

Also taken around 1970, another tree moment. This time I’m in a mango tree. That’s a little bell around my neck with yellow and orange seed beads strung on a piece of elastic thread. Another photo taken from a different angle went into our senior year book.

What a trip.

Tagged! Again...

I have been tagged by my good friend Vijaya. This exercise is probably a good distraction for me, so here goes.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read the player's blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

What were you doing five years ago?
I had just left my job of 23 years. It was jumping off a cliff because I didn’t know what I was going to do. But then I applied for and got accepted to take the ICL course and that cliff turned into a long a wonderful hand-gliding experience.

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?
Continue to get ready for the BIG 2 day week-end Market Days where I sell my tatting. Do some writing. Cook up something for lunch/dinner. Make the bed. Take a nap.

What are five snacks you enjoy?
Nuts and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Fruit salad. Gosh…I can’t think of anything else that I really enjoy snacking on.

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
Make sure my family was comfortably taken care of. Go to work for Vijaya in her publishing business. Travel more. Be generous in giving. Buy all the books I could ever want.

What are five of your bad habits?
Smoking. And that’s it, which is bad enough. Though I only smoke 5 or 6 cigarettes a day. It’s really my only vice.

What are five places where you have lived?
U. S. Virgin Islands, Clear Lake and Pedro Point (now Pacifica) CA, Gainesville FL, Washington PA, Texas.

What are five jobs you've had?
Ward clerk at a hospital. Ceramicist (? I guess that’s what you’d call it; I helped glaze and fire pottery.) Owner/operated of a gift shop called The Kit and Kaboodle. Singer in a jazz trio called Triad. And 23 years at a home for abused and neglected kids where I did so many different jobs it would fill a page.

Five people I’m tagging with the hopes they will forgive me.
Susan at: Susan Sandmore
Donna at: wordwrangler
Angela at: Angela/Cerrito
Janelle at: writermorphosis
Bonita at: zoblog

To Gene

There are people who come into your life who, in either large or small ways, make a difference.

Gene was one of those people. I suppose I could list the many influences he had on my life, my sister's life, my family's life, but of what importance are those influences to anyone except us?

What I will say about Gene is that he loved life, he loved to laugh, he loved helping people. He spent all his working years as a lowly social worker. Just think of how many lives he touched?

I got the word today from my sister, who was closest to him. On Mother's Day, Gene was doing what he enjoyed doing most, riding his motorcycle, when a tree fell on him, killing him instantly.

There are some among us who will expereince for the rest of their lives a kind of hole which once was filled by him. He will be missed.

This is the only picture I have of Gene. It was taken on July 4th, 1968. He had the most amazing blue eyes. Perhaps the sky will be just a tad bluer from this point on.

My First Lesson in Social Etiquette

I’m not saying I didn’t get taught things at home, I did. But this is the first lesson I can really remember. It happened when I was about six.

At that time, on St. John, there were less than a thousand people living on the island. Everybody knew most everybody. And everybody knew whose kids belonged to whom. We kids couldn’t get away with much. It was accepted that any adult had not only the right but the duty to reprimand, teach, or instruct an errant child.

It happened this way. We were up at the Julius E. Sprauve School. Something was happening as there were parents mingling and kids running around. I was one of those kids who was running around.

Roy Sewer was a teacher. He was a tall, handsome man and there was something about the way he carried himself that spoke of royalty. It wasn’t that he was prideful, but that he was confident.

It just so happened that my mother and Mr. Roy were talking together and I had the audacity to run between them. In an instant Mr. Roy grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. There, in front of my mother and anyone else who happened to be within ear-shot, he gave me a very stern lecture on proper social etiquette.

In essence these were his words. “Never pass between two people who are speaking to each other. Always go around them. If you can not go around them wait for a pause in the conversation, say ‘excuse me,’ and then slip between as quickly as possible.”

My mother stood there and never said a word. She was perfectly content to have Mr. Roy rebuke me. In a way, it was like having an uncle correct my behavior, for hadn’t my mother and he grown up together and been life-long friends?

To this day I am careful about going between two people when they are speaking to each other. If I can’t go around them I wait for a pause in the conversation, say “excuse me,” duck my head, and slip quickly between them.

Mr. Roy died in 2006. In 1999 my sister, mother and I took Mr. Roy to breakfast. I am glad to say I was able to tell him about the life lesson he taught me. Of course he didn’t remember it, but we had a good laugh.

Here’s a picture of Mom and Mr. Roy taken the day we had breakfast together. One can still see in the way he is sitting and in his shoulders the remnants of his regal carriage.

More Than Just Mother's Day

It may be Mother’s Day today, but more import to me is that fact that tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She will be 91 years old.

This is the earliest picture I have of her, sitting on the lap of her French grandmother. She looks to be about six or seven months old. So this picture was possibly taken in November or December of 1917.

Mom was not one to have or talk about “super-natural” experiences. But she did tell me that sometime after her grandmother died she went into a room where there was a rocking chair in which her grandmother had often sat. The rocking chair was rocking. “It was like she was in the room with me,” said Mom.

Here’s a picture of Mom taken at the time she graduated from high school, about 1935. To me she has classic movie star beauty. If I remember correctly she was wearing a yellow dress and the roses were white, you can see her diploma resting on top of the roses.

Not long afterwards, Mom sailed from Puerto Rico bound for New York and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Except for a trip up to the states when she was a very little girl (her name is recorded among those who passed through Ellis Island) she had never gone further than the Virgin Islands. She made the trip to Pratt by herself.

Here’s a picture of her on the day she left. I sense a bit of apprehension in her face.

Mom wanted to study business, but her traditional old-fashioned French father wouldn’t allow it. He recognized that she had artistic talent, which she did in abundance, so he sent her to Pratt to study costume design.

There are three stories Mom told from her days at Pratt.

#1: There was a teacher/professor who had communist leanings, a popular political stance back in those days. Here was Mom, a naive young Puerto Rican girl from a fairly well to do family, with an obvious thick Spanish accent, though she spoke fluent and perfect English. The professor apparently gave Mom a hard time, accusing her and her family of being colonialists, of being bourgeoisie, of repressing, abusing, and mal-treating the “native” population. Mom looked too white for this professor to believe she was a native too. This attitude was new to Mom. Yes she had grown up with servants, but she had never seen anyone of any class or social status mistreated or abused. Her father, at the time, had the only refrigeration business on the island. He had worked hard to provide his family with a comfortable life. How was that a bad thing? Particularly when he provided jobs! Apparently this professor actually brought her tears. It must have been hard for Mom to be so accused and not be able to defend herself without getting into trouble.

#2: Among her many interests was psychology. She once wrote a paper that combined art and psychology. It was about the affect color has on one’s psychological mood. Heady stuff for the day, new and innovative. She got a B. Her roommate asked to borrow the paper, copied it and turned it in to another professor. She got an A.

#3: This is my favorite story. Mom and her roommate lived several stories up in a girl’s dorm. Often they would, in the winter, keep milk and pies and such like things outside on the window ledge of their room. Directly across from them was a boy’s dorm. The space between the two buildings was apparently quite narrow. Narrow enough that the boys who lived directly opposite them would sometimes steal their food. Mom decided to get even. She made up a batch of brownies with a hefty dose of chocolate exlax and set it outside on the ledge. Needless to say the boys stole the brownies. People wondered why they weren’t in class. Needless to say the boys never stole anything off their window ledge again.

Mom later used what she learned at Pratt to design and make fabulous costumes for my sister and me and to make dresses which she sold to a store on St. Thomas. But it was her innate business sense that served her best. She managed and did the bookkeeping for the gas station and guest house we later owned and opperated. She was a partener in another business, a giftshop/restaurant. And she knew what property to buy when and how to manage it. This last is her legacy to my sister and me.

Happy Mother’s Day and Happy Birthday Mom. You are the best.
All my love from,
Your “growth”, The Rotten Kid, (you're the one who taught me)
Bish

A Car is Born

This is a huge day at our house.

Today a car was born.

After working on her for nine years (as time and money and health permitted) Stan fired up the engine of the '57. It lit right up. It roared to life and stayed on fire! This is no ordinary "restoration." She's a hotrod. She has an LT1 fuel injection engine in her. Modifications had to made to get that baby into the engine compartment.

The '57 has to grow a bit more before she goes on the road. But today, May 1st, 2008, is her birthday.

I'm so proud of Stan I could burst. He's done almost all the work, from body and electronics (you should SEE all the wiring!) to mechanical, himself.