{"id":1822,"date":"2007-02-17T08:47:45","date_gmt":"2007-02-17T13:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/?p=1822"},"modified":"2007-02-18T11:09:12","modified_gmt":"2007-02-18T16:09:12","slug":"the-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/2007\/02\/17\/the-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chicken_hat.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jeffrey thinks Mack wore his red and white hat \u00e2\u20ac\u0153probably since 1984.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d During my visits it rested reliably on his head when he mowed the lawn, walked to the library, and visited friends. Most likely never washed, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now crusty, and I considered bringing it home as a keepsake, but somewhere near those open prairies I decided to bury the hat with him.<\/p>\n

Before I tossed it atop Mack\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coffin, I asked Keith, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you a Republican?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to show you this anyway.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I held out the hat and he laughed.<\/p>\n

Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all Kansan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Republicans? Keith has two children, a boy six and a girl three. He told us, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe the mouth on her. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know kids that young could talk like that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Diane and I had the same reaction, though unspoken. Count your blessings; you might have a Hil B in the making. To make sure there is no misunderstanding, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking his daughter was assertive, not vulgar. <\/p>\n

I flipped the hat onto my father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coffin, but Peter, the Virgo, had to hop down and center it perfectly over Mack\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head. Afterwards, Diane reminded me it landed near his toes as we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d intentionally positioned the casket so Mack\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feet pointed east. <\/p>\n

With Mack in the box, in the ground and the lid lowered, I walked up to Keith. I thanked him for helping bury my father, and I held out two folded bills. He recoiled like the last honest politician turning down a bribe. Keith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arms went straight down with his palms flat out and fingers pointed towards me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take that. I get paid by the hour,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. <\/p>\n

He caught me unaware, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say I was surprised. I live in a region where you feel guilty if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tip the shopper holding the door for you at K-Mart. The further from the east you travel, the more civilized the country becomes. People are friendlier, they feel more honest, and you know your first stop, when you get back home, won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be at an ATM.<\/p>\n

However, I knew the winner of this friendly dispute and it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the man standing in front of me. Not this day. I dug as deep as I could as fast as I could.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look, my father was a generous man.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d want you to have the money.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

Keith watched us drive up with the casket in our car, worked hard to get it into the ground, wondered aloud where the funeral directors were, waited while Diane said the last words, and turned away as we hugged. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d become friends and he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t taking money from us, but how could he argue with my father?<\/p>\n

The truth about my father is more ambiguous. He was generous in certain areas. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d tip waitresses like Brian, at about thirty or forty percent, and if one of his kids needed money, he provided it. But shuffling through his checking account, I found one donation, to my new favorite charity, for ten dollars.<\/p>\n

Diane wrote my father’s obituary and she ended our odyssey with a graveside reading<\/a> of “After Apple-picking” by Robert Frost.<\/p>\n

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
\nToward heaven still,
\nAnd there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
\nBeside it, and there may be two or three
\nApples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
\nBut I am done with apple-picking now.
\nEssence of winter sleep is on the night,
\nThe scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
\nI cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
\nI got from looking through a pane of glass
\nI skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
\nAnd held against the world of hoary grass.
\nIt melted, and I let it fall and break.
\nBut I was well
\nUpon my way to sleep before it fell,
\nAnd I could tell
\nWhat form my dreaming was about to take.
\nMagnified apples appear and disappear,
\nStem end and blossom end,
\nAnd every fleck of russet showing clear.
\nMy instep arch not only keeps the ache,
\nIt keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
\nI feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
\nAnd I keep hearing from the cellar bin
\nThe rumbling sound
\nOf load on load of apples coming in.
\nFor I have had too much
\nOf apple-picking: I am overtired
\nOf the great harvest I myself desired.
\nThere were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
\nCherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
\nFor all
\nThat struck the earth,
\nNo matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
\nWent surely to the cider-apple heap
\nAs of no worth.
\nOne can see what will trouble
\nThis sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
\nWere he not gone,
\nThe woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
\nLong sleep, as I describe its coming on,
\nOr just some human sleep. <\/p>\n

Photo Gallery<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey thinks Mack wore his red and white hat \u00e2\u20ac\u0153probably since 1984.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d During my visits it rested reliably on his head when he mowed the lawn, walked to the library, and visited friends. Most likely never washed, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now crusty, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}