Old Invites and Stuff

INVITES

Here are some of the old hat party invitations, scribed by yours truly. I am missing a few of the early invites. (If some of you have ones that are missing I would love to get a copy). My mom was a saver and she never threw away my old baseball card collection or coin collections, so maybe some of you are of that ilk. (Although I don't got the 1955 Mickey Mantle rookie card, I do have Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, and Wayne Terwilliger. And I do have a 1909 SVDB penny).

Anyway, I write the invites about two months before each hat party, and when the invite is penned, I start getting in a "hat party state of mind-" working on prizes; putting the invitation list together; and worrying about what the weather will be for hat party night. It all starts with the invitation.

HP II
HP V
HP VI
HP XI
HP XII
HP XIII
HP XIV
HP XV
HP XVI
HP XVII
HP XIX
HP XX
HP XXI

 
STUFF

"Stuff" is the soul of the hat collection----- the stories about some of the hats; the beginning at Yellow Cab; a clever retort by a friend; importance of hats in every day-and not so every day life.

The hat collection, like every collection, is really a diary. I got the Big Oh's Yomiura Giants baseball cap from the Big Oh's brother who was a colleague of Dr. Yoshiki Hiki, who is a surgeon in Tokyo who befriended me on my first visit to Japan in 1978. I got the cow stomach "hat" when Karen I visited the Chulays in Kenya in 1984 when I was trying to get the hat from the Masai Mara tribesman. I got the ceremonial Hair Hat in Papua New Guinea when Ruben and Lucas and I visited Dick and Jeannie Teare when Dick was the ambassador there.

Ruben schlepped a sharp-edged Bolivian Festival head mask in a backpack for six weeks to transport it 6000 miles because he knew it would mean a lot to me. Lucas and Geoff Ravenhill stayed up all nite after a Christmas Festival in a small town in South America to coax a village hat maker into assembling a feather headdress which they somehow carried in a small aircraft and then back to Washington. And some say that it was not Karen's charm, good looks, sincere demeanor, or smarts, that won my heart, but the Mexican headgear she brought back from Oaxaca in 1972 after persuading one of the locals of its importance.

The hat collection, like every collection, is a diary.


See where it all began

     

See what this old guy had to say about it

The great red baron had a hat


Pictures from a hat exhibition

See what another hat man had to say

yarmulkes from all over

Extra! Extra!!

A prestigious medical journal

Hear what this Japanese doctor had to say!

Hear what this New Yorkian doctor had to say!

This is kooky stuff!

This is weird!