hats

There are lots of hats.

Everywhere.

Akubras, berets, boaters and bowlers. Buckets, cloches, cowboy, fedoras, and panamas. Hats for rainy days. Caps for balding men. Formal head attire for wedding party members. Every and any kind of hat.

There are also lots of boxes. Brown, black and beige boxes. Big and small boxes. Boxes to the ceiling, behind shelves and on shelves. Boxes stacked on top of each other. Piled high, piled sideways, piled right side up and collecting dust. Boxes of hats, and hats in boxes.

Everywhere.

The man who runs the place is old. Very old. He's eighty-nine, to be exact. I don't catch his name, but he looks like some one's grandfather. (In fact, he probably is.) He's short, wears a long sleeved shirt and sweater vest, long corduroy pants and, fittingly enough, a hat on his scantily haired head. There's a hearing aid in one of his ears, but he still has a hard time catching the phrases and words that people tell him.

He likes to talk, though. Not being able to hear well doesn't seem to stop him from wanting to speak. He talks and talks and tries to listen a little and then talks some more. About hats. About being a military veteran. About his wife and growing up and living in the same town his entire life. About running a hat shop. About hats again. And so on.

Deitz's Hat Shop has been a Scranton, PA staple for any number of years. The exact span of time has slipped my memory, but trust when I say it's been longer than I've been alive.

The old man has been running the shop for a large part of this time span.

Business used to be good, but current times aren't so hat friendly. This, at least, is according to the old man who runs Deitz's. To begin with, hats have gotten more expensive. It used to be you could get a nice rabbit fur hat for a decent price, but now a similar type of hat would run you around $150. Which is too much money, according to the old man. No one wants to spend that much money on a hat.

Another problem is how hats are sold to suppliers. Store owners have to buy them in groups of a dozen. Since there isn't a large turn over rate for hats, most of the dozen hats ordered will just sit around for years, collecting dust. You simply can't buy one hat at a time. You have to buy the whole lot of 'em. In a place like Scranton, that makes hat buying rather difficult for store owners.

Which explains all the boxes in Deitz's. And all the hats.

Boxes and boxes and boxes of hats and hats and hats.

Everywhere.

The fun part is trying on the hats. There are many sitting out on racks, waiting to be scooped up and bought. I try on a few types of hats, parading around the shop like I own the place. My friends are doing the same thing, fingering hat brims and then delicately placing their choices on their heads. Hats aren't the type of thing you just slam down on your cranium. They deserve a little respect.

We stalk around the shop -- we are the only customers, after all -- and make conversation with the old man and muse at the prices of what we're wearing on our heads. I put on a cloche, exactly the style my grandmother wore in the 1920's, and examine myself in a mirror. How very last century.

(But I like it!)

I try on a cowboy hat and look ridiculous.

A beret goes on next, and I pretend to talk with a French accent. No one thinks it's funny except for me. I make a joke about Brie and French bread and then immediately feel like an idiot and take off the hat.

Funny how hats can bring out different sides of one's personality. Even the geeky parts.

We eventually left the store without buying anything. The old man said he was happy to let us try on the hats and it was fine not to buy anything. He said he gets bored in there anyway, and it was nice to liven things up with some kids.

I have a feeling I'll be back, though. Hat shops aren't a common site these days. Anyway, I could really use an akabura. Or a boater. Or a fedora.

You never know.