Mr. Write's Page

This is a typical Tyrolean hat or Alpine hat, a style associated with the Alps region of Europe — namely, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and northern Italy:

Almost makes you want to yodel, doesn’t it?

This particular hat is festooned with Volksmarching pins earned for participating in fitness walking events. They do that a lot in Europe.

This is a typical Oktoberfest hat, commonly worn by merrymakers attending the annual Oktoberfest celebration in Munich:

As you can see, the Oktoberfest hat is modeled after the Tyrolean hat. It’s usually made of green or black felt, features a spiffy decorative band, and is accented with feathers, flowers, a tuft of goat hair, or a spray of hog bristles.

Here, for example, are some Oktoberfest revelers in a Munich beer hall, attired in the traditional manner:

Oktoberfest is a lavish two-week fall festival that dates back to 1810. It began when Crown Prince Ludwig threw a party to celebrate his marriage to the lovely Princess Therese, who chose him over Napoleon. Munich has been partying ever since.

And a whopper of a party it is. Attendance in recent years is about six million people. They listen to oom-pah music and consume mass quantities of roast pork, ham hocks, bratwurst, knackwurst, bochwurst, weisswurst, frankfurters, sauerkraut, red cabbage, potato salad, and pretzels. Not to mention seven million liters of beer.

As a teenager, I had the good fortune of living in Germany for three memorable years, when Dad was stationed in Stuttgart. But, even though we lived just two hours from Munich, I was sadly unable to experience Oktoberfest properly.

Yes, Mom and Dad took us to Oktoberfest one year. But being just a teenager, all I could do was follow my parents glumly as we wandered through the crowds. I listened to the polka music, and I ate my fill of brats and kraut and pretzels. But I got not a single sip of a Hofbräu, a Löwenbräu, or a Paulaner Oktoberfest Märzen.

To this day, the loss of that opportunity stings me tragically.

Not that it counted as any consolation, but while we were in Munich, I bought myself a very natty Oktoberfest hat. It was green felt, similar to the hats pictured above, but the feather was much longer.

In fact, my feather was a fuzzy white ostrich feather, something like this:

Or this:

Debonair young fellow that I was, I thought the hat made quite a statement. Even Dad admired it. In his youth, he told me, such hats were called “go-to-hell” hats.

Monday morning after our trip, I showed up at the school bus stop wearing my jaunty Oktoberfest hat. My classmates knew the Smiths were going to the festival, so no one was surprised to see me sporting the thing. Admiring comments followed, and I took a seat on the bus.

In those days, the Army had half a dozen installations around Stuttgart, but only one high school. We kids had a bus ride of 25 miles, twice a day, between our housing project on the east side of Stuttgart and the high school on the south side.

The buses were converted Army ambulances, not traditional school buses. Here’s a photo I took one day:

Note the kid on the left who is facing the rear of the bus. If we wanted to face each other to talk or play cards, the seats could be folded down.

(Remember, this was in the late 1950s. Safety hadn’t been invented yet.)

The bus ride was long and boring. People napped, read a book, chatted, played bridge, and got restless.

Imagine, if you will, young Rocky on the bus that morning, wearing his green Oktoberfest hat — lost in thought, much like the young man above wearing the hound’s-tooth hat.

Imagine you are seated somewhere behind young Rocky, looking up at a long white ostrich feather — a wing feather, which is the fluffiest and most luxurious on the bird — looming above the seat and bobbing gently with the motion of the bus.

Wouldn’t you be tempted to… do something to that feather?

A wave of laughter from the back of the bus was my first hint that something was amiss. I turned and noticed a few kids smirking, but saw no reason for their jocularity. Puzzled, I faced forward and resumed whatever I was doing.

But the half-suppressed bursts of snickering continued. Before long, I turned toward the back of the bus again and looked around inquisitively. Except for the giggling of my friends, nothing seemed unusual.

Everything finally clicked when I smelled smoke.

Instantly, I snatched the hat from my head. The luxurious ostrich feather had been reduced to a smoldering stump. Tiny wisps of gray smoke arose from the glowing nub.

Nobody owned up to setting fire to my beautiful feather. Nobody ever told me who did it.

And frankly, I didn’t ask. In truth, the episode WAS pretty funny. And in my heart, I knew I probably would have done the same thing.

Although the feather was history, my stylish hat was unharmed. That night, I removed the burnt stump and replaced it, wisely, with a more modest and less tempting feather, like this one:

I wore my Oktoberfest hat proudly for a long time. During school hours, of course, I stashed it in my locker, but I always donned it for the long bus rides. It was, indeed, a fine hat.

When we returned to the U.S. after my high school graduation, I lost track of the hat. Where it went, I don’t know. It may have been lost during the move.

Or, Mom may have thrown it out when I went away to college. That was when she jettisoned my sizable and quite valuable collection of comic books and Mad Magazines.

But that’s a subject too painful to talk about.