Easter Hats

            My Mom was a hat person. I remember her wearing one on Sundays to mass and every other time that she dressed up and went out. She was a tiny woman, standing 4’11” in her stocking feet. But when she wore her stylish spike heels, she stood, 5’2”.  Her long brown hair was worn up on her head. Usually it was in a bun or a partial bun, encircled by a braid. With the way she wore her hair and a hat added, that probably added another inch to her stature.

            But what I remember vividly is the ritual that went along with buying her hat and my hat for Easter. Those hats were made out of natural straw with broad wide rims turned up like a sailor hat or wide floppy brim. The Easter hats were decorated with a bright satin ribbon around the band with tiny imitation flowers or a large flower added. The hats came in white or other spring-like colors of pink, blue, or yellow.  Once the hat was found, finding matching shoes and a purse was next on the list, along with a new dress and a spring coat.

            I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and still can remember our all day excursion to find our hats in downtown Cleveland. My mother didn’t drive, so we took a bus to the stores. But in the 50s, I can remember traveling on one of the last electric trolley that crossed over the Cuyahoga River. I remember the excitement the anxiety I felt looking down between the tracks and seeing the water and wonder, as only a child would…what it would be like if we fell into that river. That thought would send a shiver down my body, but only for a moment, then my mind would return to the adventure of going downtown with my Mom and the pleasures that awaited us.

In the later days, we would catch a bus by the corner of our house, and it would drop us off at Public Square, right across from the Highbee’s Department store. That was always where we started and ended our mission to find our Easter hats. Sometimes we would go to the May company Department store, but it was usually Highbee’s where we seemed to find our hats. Highbee’s was located next to the Terminal Tower in Cleveland, where the train station was located, then the Rapid Transit System would come in to affect and that would be another way to get to the downtown area. There was an outside entrance to the store or one that came from inside the Terminal Tower into Highbee’s basement.

After what seemed like hours, we found the right hats, discarding the fussy hats that had too many flowers, the ones with the nets, or with the feathers. Mine was a straw hat with the brim turned up like a sailor’s hat, with a few straw flowers decorated along the wide satin ribbon. My mother’s hat was also a straw hat that fit tight like an old fashioned man’s derby hat. It had a small feather stylish tucked inside the ribbon on the hat band. My mother paid for our hats with her Highbee’s credit card. We carried them in their hat boxes with the Highbee’s name printed across the lid of the box.

            Our next stop was lunch at the Woolworth’s Dime Store. We sat at the long soda fountain, which seemed to take up half of the store. This was what I had been waiting for. Now I ordered my favorite: Pepsi Cola, and a turkey platter with slices of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, beans, cranberry sauce, a cloverleaf roll, and butter.

            Afterward we would shop in Woolworth’s, looking for whatever we needed to buy. We would retrace our steps back to Highbee’s, stopping at another small shop, “The Nut House,” and we would buy a small bag of warmed cashew nuts to take back home.

            In Highbee’s basement, we looked for shoes and gloves to match our hats. My Mom would buy nylon stockings and socks for me. The last thing that we did before we would go home was to stop at Highbee’s Frosty Bar. We couldn’t go back home without at least one frosty malted drink. This delightful drink was served in a small glass. It was a thick drink that seemed to melt from the warmth of my hand. Sometimes, I might start the first sip with one of those awful brain freezes only to end up with one of my last gulps of the melted drink splattering in my face with a plop.

            When I was older and would go downtown with my best friend, because the frosty drink cost 24 cents, we would actually drink four or five of them. It just seemed that I could never get enough of this wonderful drink.

            Then we retrace our foot steps going back home, standing on Public Square and waiting for the bus to return us safely back home. The evening was spent modeling our hats for my Dad, who smiled and told us how beautiful we looked in them. Then we placed our hatboxes in our closets.

Every time the closet door was opened, the hat box was the first thing that Mom spotted, pulled down, and opened. She would look at the hat with admiration, and longing, anticipating the pleasure of putting the hat on her head again. This ritual became a daily occurrence, while the days were counted and the excitement mounted waiting for Easter Sunday, and the time when the hat would finally be worn with an outfit, for show.

            When Easter Sunday finally arrived, the last item to go on was our new Easter hat. My Dad would drive us to church, or we would walk if the weather was nice. Everyone admiring each others Easter finery as well as their hats. A sea of hats would be all you would see on Easter Sunday at church, along with the sweet smell orchid corsages that were worn pinned onto the lapel of the women’s coats.

            Somewhere in the mid 60s, wearing hats stopped being the fashionable thing to do. The hat departments and Millinery Shops started to close because wearing hats seemed to go out of style. Or maybe Vatican 2 changed things by ruling that woman no longer had to where hats to church.

Now on Easter Sunday, as I sit in church in suburban Pennsylvania, I notice a sea of people with different colored hair. Once in awhile someone stands out with a hat on, and it is usually a woman in her 70s, a younger stylish woman, or a little girl. This is when I think about those straw Easter hats, and how much I miss the ritual that went along with buying them with my Mom.