portrait of an old hat

I inherited this hat from CWF.

Twenty years ago I was a young man and I remember helping CWF as he leaned on my arm and stumbled around the farm in Aquasco. It was the last time he would ever see his farm, the last time he would walk outdoors as a man.

He had married into money, his first wife a beauty from Savannah. CWF was young, smart , handsome, hung. She owned a ranch in Wyoming. He loved it there. The hat is from Wyoming too.

Later he married my grandmother, my Nana. He had money problems, he'd lost all his oil fortunes and was on the skids. She had little but he didn't know that. But she did take care of him, and she did love him.

I thought him a bit of an ass, but I was good to him, because my Nana loved him, and because it was the right thing to do.

So he got old, he had Alzheimer's, he tried to shoot Mr B his caretaker, with a cheap 38 CAL pistol that I later traded for an old saxophone. One night CWF tried to burn the farmhouse down by piling Nana's old mink stoles up on the electric stove. It made a lot of smoke but no fire.

So I inherited his old hat, except it was new then.

I wore it making hay in West Virginia, with my old friend Frank. Frank's dead now too (liver cancer).

The hat was always too small so I scrunched it down onto my head.
It's stretched and soaked with my sweat.

Now it sits in the basement on top of the drill press.

The snake skin is from Tom's barn.

Today I took the hat upstairs and sat it in the sun and shot a blip.