Bigelow Hats was located (“conveniently,” according to the display ad in the Bowler News Times) on Main Street, between the Post Office and the Union Trust Savings & Loan Company. On Wednesdays business was slow, but lately it had been slow every day.
Once the town of Bowler supported four hat stores. Now only my stepfather’s store—his “haberdashery,” he called it (though other than hats the only men’s items he sold were umbrellas and an occasional scarf)—survived barely. By the time he and my mother married his profits had been flat for three years, and he was in hock to the Union Trust next door. Had she known this it’s doubtful that my mother would have married him, in fact she wouldn’t have. But she didn’t know. She knew only that Ed Bigelow didn’t work in a hat factory, that he dressed well, that he smelled of sweet pipe tobacco and cologne, that his fingernails were cut square and polished without a trace of factory grime under them, that he was a childless widower who lived in a grand Victorian house on Crown Hill Avenue, with a wraparound porch, stained windows and an octagonal turret and a circular driveway edged with day lilies.
When she learned that he was going broke my mother did all she could to get Ed Bigelow to sell his hat store and embark on some more profitable pursuit. Ed Bigelow wouldn’t hear of it. To him hats were more than just a way of making money: they were a symbol of man’s progress, of his pride. Hats were synonymous with civilization: you could scarcely have one without the other. For a man to be seen in public without a hat was equivalent to going shoeless or shirtless, or of not bathing. It meant that he was a bum, or a slob, or both. Even the lowest factory employee, a back shop worker or a boiler room attendant, wore a hat in public if he had any couth. It might be a rough hat of the cheapest wool felt, or just a tweed or leather cap, and badly stained and battered to boot, but he would wear it and wear it with no less pride than that with which a king wore his crown. That more and more men went around hatless was, to my stepfather, nothing more or less than a symptom of that most modern form of temporary insanity known as fashion, the saving grace of which was that, whatever latest horrors it brought forth, those horrors were sure to be as transient and vulnerable as the germs of a summer flu. The symptoms might drag on for days or weeks or months, but eventually the white corpuscles of common sense would come to the rescue, bringing men back to their senses (and back to their derbies, their fedoras, their trilbys, their pork pies and homburgs). Like storm clouds the dark days of hatlessness would pass.
Meanwhile, was it any wonder that mankind faced nuclear annihilation? On a planet where men still wore their hats, such a prospect would have been, if not unthinkable, highly unlikely. Such was my stepfather’s view of things. In the world according to Edward P. Bigelow, hats alone would save humanity from self-destruction.
* * *
That Wednesday it rained, an unyielding downpour that started the night before and continued all afternoon. I arrived with Gilbert on foot, each of us with our umbrellas. Seeing me, Ed Bigelow shook my hand (he always shook my hand; Ed Bigelow was a dedicated and proficient hand-shaker) and said with a wink, “What’s up, there, sport?” To which I replied, per our little vaudeville routine, “I don’t know, Ed, what’s up with you?” Gas prices are up, taxes are up, unemployment is up, and hats are up! But respect for elders is definitely down! Delivered with a rabbit-punch to my shoulder.
Gilbert and I jammed our umbrellas into a receptacle by the door, above which a bell tinkled, warning my stepfather in the rare event of a customer’s entry. To either side of the door a plate glass window framed a carefully arranged display. Since it was summer, Panamas dominated the left-hand window display, with a yellow streamer announcing “Straws to cover every head type in town!” and a humorous touch provided by daisies and a smiling sun scissored from construction paper. The right-hand window featured an assortment of felt fedoras revolving like planets around a large papier maché globe, with maps of the world stapled to a chintz backdrop of sky blue and models of various forms of transport—planes, busses and trains—dangling from the same fishing lines as the Spitfires in my bedroom. The slogan for this display was “See the World in a Caxton-Dumont!” The effect, I must admit, was ingenious, or would have been were it not mostly obscured by my stepfather’s recently installed neon sign:
Bigelow & Son
Since 1898
The sign’s flashing insistent modernity jarred badly with the sober gold-leaf cursive on the other window and would have, in my opinion, better suited a pool hall or a pawnshop. Oh, yes, that “& Son”? That was supposed to be me. In three years, as soon as I turned sixteen, Ed Bigelow and I would be partners.
Usually on my visits to my stepfather’s store I would dust the display cases, or steam-clean the hats that weren’t in glass cases and that had accumulated gray patinas of sticky dust. Or I’d polish the big, plate glass windows, or vacuum the carpet, or buff the many mirrors big and small, ovoid and rectangular, hand-held and screwed to walls, in which customers admired or disapproved of their hat-wearing selves. Or, if there was nothing else to do, I’d sit in my stepfather’s cramped office leafing through one of the trade magazines (Hat’s Off! Hat Life, The Sophisticated Hatter) he kept shelved and in neat piles there, and within whose esteemed pages one found articles on a wide array of stimulating topics.
What’s Wrong with My Hat Displays?
Many stores fail to light their wall cases adequately. Most hat cases have no direct light on the hats; and those which have illumination behind a valance at the top succeed in lighting only the top one or two shelves.
The Art of Fitting Faces
When a man’s ears stick out from the sides of his head the wrong hat makes them even more conspicuous. The crown should be proportioned to the face, but an extreme taper should be avoided, while the brim should be flat-set at the back and sides, and snapped full across the front.
Hats for the Big Fellow
Never sell a big man a hat with a narrow brim and a tapered crown. A narrow brim adds emphasis to a man’s weight and to the width of his face and gives the hat an old-fashioned, stodgy air. A too high crown, on the other hand, makes such a man look like a giant, making his height a liability rather than an asset.
That day, however, my stepfather, who was always dreaming up new ways to enhance his business and increase sales, had another task for me. He had invented a gizmo for calculating hat sizes. While Gilbert sat in his usual chair in the corner near his office, I sat in a leather chair in the middle of the store, from where I had a view through the window with the neon sign, its letters pulsing backwards. Through that window I’d polished I watched cars zip down rainy Main Street, shedding puddles of brake lights. The neon sign bled, too. My stepfather, in his gray suit, coiffured, cuffed and cologned, pipe in mouth, hovered over me.
“Hold your head straight, Leo. Don’t lean forward. Here—” With manicured cool fingers he adjusted my skull. “Perfect.”
“A hot dog,” said Gilbert, in the corner—Gilbert who would have been an ideal test subject for my stepfather’s device had his head not been so unusually large.
“Now,” said my stepfather, “if you’ll just bear with me, I’m going to adjust the three thumbscrews.”
What Color Hat Shall I Sell Him?
Brown hats are best with brown or greenish suits or coats. They rarely look good with gray clothing. Some brown or tan hats may be worn with some blue or blue-gray clothing, but the salesman or the customer must have a real color-sense to be sure of these harmonies.
The instrument (called the “Comformator”, suggesting a mixture of comfort and conformity) despite its soothing, compliant name sat on my head like a crown of thorns. While he made his adjustments I looked out the window. A policeman in a black raincoat direct traffic next to his little wooden kiosk. He wore the equivalent of a clear shower cap over his pointy cap.
“That should do it,” said my stepfather. He crouched to pick up the Polaroid Land Camera that he had put on the carpeted floor nearby. “What I’d like you to do for me now, sport, is I’d like you to hold of the sides of the Comformator, like you’re holding a hat by its brim in a gust of wind, but gently, now. Don’t tug. Okay?”
“A hot dog,” said Gilbert.
How to Sell Quality
First, point out to the customer that in a hat of fine materials and conscientious workmanship the felt is firmer, smoother, springier, and tighter. Next, get the customer’s old hat off his head; this gives you your cue on sizing and price. If it’s a $7.50, show him a $10.00. You can always come down. If he makes no objection, try a $12.50.
“Now hold perfectly still.” He pointed the Polaroid at me. A flashbulb exploded. “Perfect.” He counted to fifteen: one-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three . . .meanwhile I kept looking out the window, watching the same police officer pick at his nose between cars. Above his head an ignored traffic signal swung in the wind and rain. Across the way I could see into the drug store, with its dark wooden booths partitioned by beveled glass. The soda fountain was busy, its customers lined up to escape the rain. As I drew an imaginary root beer float up a straw and into my mouth where it exploded in sweetness down to the roots of my teeth, my stepfather peeled the backing away from the developed photograph.
“This is for my patent application,” I heard him say as, in a corner of my vision, his arm shook the Polaroid to dry it further. “To my knowledge, there’s never been a device quite like the Comformator. Okay, Leo, you can let go of the thing now.”
When You Don’t Have It
When the customer asks for something you know you haven’t got, do one of three things: Admit you haven’t the particular article and cheerfully send him elsewhere; admit you have it and try to interest him in something else; say nothing about not having what is called for, but confidently present the hat you know will be best for him.
The customer nearest me at the soda fountain wore a red raincoat. Through layers of glass and rain her features were blurred, but her hair was the unmistakable yellow of day lilies, and I wondered if it might be Jill. I made up my mind that it was.
“The whole secret to using the Comformator,” said my stepfather at his desk while entering figures in a notebook, “is to make sure it’s centered just so. If it’s off-center even by a fraction of an inch, that can throw all your measurements off. That’s important, Leo. It’s also why I’ve built in two ways for checking centeredness, first by equalizing the protrusions of the brim rods, then using the thumbscrews.”
I watched a mother walk her child quickly through the downpour. The child licked a lollipop in the rain. A root beer lollipop, if I had any say in the matter.
Selling Hats to the Hatless
Most people who go hatless have a definite reason for doing so. Many of them can be won back to hat wearing by intelligent arguments, which refute those reasons. For example, if a man says that a hat hurts his head, explain that he probably has an irregularly shaped head and that you have some ovals that should fit him comfortably. To the man who says that air and sunshine are good for the hair, point out that doctors and scalp specialists have stated repeatedly that direct exposure to the sun’s rays dries out the hair’s natural oils, explaining why lifeguards and soldiers the world over have always worn head-covering.
“Another thing to remember is to always sight the protrusions before you take the Conform. Oh, and be sure you’ve got the front underpin centered over the bridge of the nose. Forget that, you might as well throw the whole works out the window.”
A burly man in a yellow slicker, holding its hood over his head, charged across the street against traffic, bouncing like a pinball between stopped cars. The policeman blew his whistle and shot a white palm at him, but the man just kept going.
“Always set the Comformator low. Never set it too high. Better too low than too high.”
Lightweights Make Extra Sales
The time to sell lightweight felts is in the late Spring and early Fall, when neither fall hats nor regular weight felts are selling. Lightweights sell to the eye and the touch. Ruffle it a bit, punch the crown in and out. Then hand it to the customer and let him do it, too. Once a man has handled one and tried it on he is usually sold, even though he realizes that it’s not as sensible or long-wearing a buy as a winter hat.
“A hot dog,” said Gilbert.
I thought of the Project Mercury astronauts and remembered an article I read in Life magazine, how one of the astronauts—it may have been Alan Shepard—said, “The best thing about being in space is looking at the earth, and the next best thing is being weightless.” My mind’s eye flashed the black and white photos that went with the article, of astronauts clowning in their gravity-free space capsules, squirting ribbons of Tang and catching floating peanuts with their mouths. I longed to float free with them, to escape the tyranny of gravity, to get out from under this weight bearing down on my head, to blast through earth’s ponderous atmosphere and drift free and easy among the vacuum-packed stars.
“You know, son,” my stepfather’s voice bubbled its way to me from a great distance of black space, “if we play our cards right this device could very well revolutionize the milliner’s trade. Imagine, Leo, every hat sold in America a perfect fit, not the guesswork of some shoddy salesman at Sears & Roebuck! Think of all the satisfied customers, the repeat sales! Satisfaction, Leo, that’s the key to pulling this business of ours out of its slump! Fashion’s got nothing to do with it.”
How to Shape the Hat
The crease must be centered. For this the bow-tie on the leather is your guide. Note the middle finger in the picture opposite—touching the inside of the hat just above the bow-tie. Never shape a hat against the chest as shown in the next picture, a common habit with inexperienced salesmen, but a bad one. It is almost impossible to center a crease this way, or to judge how deep the crease is being made. In short, it’s the job of a butcher, not an artist.
Six months before it had been new display cases, the ones built by Virgil Zeno. Then it had been fluorescent lighting so men could predict what their hats would look like in office environments, then the wall to wall carpeting, then the flashy neon sign. My stepfather shifted stock, changed his window displays, rearranged furniture, wore different neckties and even a bowtie, switched the part in his hair, slapped different brands of cologne on his cheeks, smoked different flavored tobaccos in his pipe, did everything he could to address the problem of falling sales. With each and every adjustment he would proclaim the problem solved, only to watch helplessly as sales continued their downward trajectory.
Hat Etiquette
There can be no question that wearing a colored, knockabout daytime hat when accompanying a lady in evening dress is decidedly bad manners. Wearing a dinner coat with a derby or a colored daytime hat is as bad manners as wearing unpolished shoes.
“Leo?”
“Hmm?”
“You don’t have to keep still anymore. The Comformator’s not on your head.”
Oh, but it was, it would always be there, on my twelve year-old head, my crown of thorns, my woven chaplet of spiny branches. I felt sorry for Ed Bigelow. And feeling sorry for people is much, much worse than just plain hating them. It made me want to smother Ed Bigelow with one of his hats and put us both out of our misery.
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