Hats.

I’ve always been a hat guy. I have a big head and they always seemed to compliment my face so over the years I’ve dabbled in them all. Farmer, cowboy, trucker, baseball. All different hats which send very different messages. Growing up in Ohio, a yellow Dekalb hat with a green brim sporting the flying corn cob meant your family farmed corn or another of their fine products. A green John Deere hat meant your family made enough at farming to afford the very best. Nothing Runs Like a Deere. Cowboy? Well, blame John Travolta and Urban Cowboy. The 80s brought us the fantasy of trucking with BJ and the Bear and hat pins. There we were, sitting in the glow of the television set watching Greg Evigan and his best friend Bear. Pondering the reality of having a Kenworth 18 wheeler and a primate pal. New dreams and better scenes and best of all he didn’t pay property tax. Honking his horn at Ronald Reagan. Then it was Johnny Bench and the Big Red Machine. A hat in that remarkable red with a white C to wear while eating your Skyline chili. The trend started downhill with the striped stove pipe Pittsburgh Pirates hat, but that is another story.

I never understood hats and religion, but they are as prevalent as any sports team and what’s worse people will kill each other over what kind of hat you wear or refuse to wear. Many of the people at the Capitol building on Jan.6 wore red hats with white lettering and we didn’t round them up even though it was more of a fascist, not fashion statement. Most recently protests began in Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died under mysterious circumstances after reportedly being stopped in Tehran for not wearing a hijab by something called the morality police. I always assumed Joan Rivers was the Captain of the Fashion Police, but never heard of her beating George Clooney to death for wearing white after Labor Day. Differences in religion or politics should be this inane. Rounding up people for wearing a specific head covering or a hat is as nonsensical as believing your God is any better than anyone else’s God. Spirituality is important as it gives us a sense of community and light in times of darkness. I was looking at the AP’s 2022 Year in Photos and between Mother Nature and Mother Russia, there has been some serious darkness around the world in the last year and we are in need of more light.

I’m not a practicing Christian, but I’m familiar with most of the parables used to describe God and I like the idea of not killing each other and looking after the less fortunate. A couple of things that seem to get lost in modern American society. I’m trying to vote and support like minded people to help things get better. How can I show my support beyond voting? Maybe I should make a hat. I just don’t want to get killed for it.