I just bought a fedora

 because I am thinking of taking my old look back. I tried it on and it looks pretty good.

Between the mid 70s and sometime around 1983 my basic uniform was a pair of Levi 501s, a khaki shirt, an old G-1 Navy leather flight jacket and a fedora. For a while I traded the fedora for some kind of a western hat. However after some broad in a bar stole my western hat. I returned to the fedora.

In 1983 or so Indiana Jones came along and I had to change my uniform because everyone said I was dressing like him even though he was dressing like me. It was a look I had gotten from the 40s and early 50s which is pretty much where Speilberg got Indy's look from.

A good fedora is a neat hat that you can be anyone in. You can be an explorer, a swashbuckler, an archeologist, a 40s truck driver, a soldier of fortune, a gangster, Clark Kent, a private eye, a moonshiner, a reporter, or even a police detective.

Dick Tracy never caught a disfigured criminal character without his on and the only time it ever came off was when Prune Face (or was it Knot Head) shot a hole in it.

The possibilities of who you can be in a fedora are endless. 

Or you can just simply be an ordinary guy like me.

I originally got the look from the generation behind me, my dad's. The leather jacket and fedora was a common uniform of former flyboys in the late 40s and early 50s. Back then men wore hats. Somewhere I saw an old picture of my dad in his Air Corps leather jacket and a fedora, circa 1947.

When I got off of the airplane from Alaska in a visit home back in '82 my dad laughed and commented I reminded him of himself back when he got out of the service. He had picked me up at the airport when he said that.

When we got home, my mother commented that I looked like my father did sometimes thirty years ago. Actually she added my fedora was pretty grubby and dad would never be caught dead in such a ratty hat. Dad was a little more of a natty dresser than I was. She later took me out and bought me a new one.

It was the last time I ever saw him alive and the year before Raiders of the Lost Ark came out.

The look came from countless movies, pulps and comic books. It's sort of a retro 40s thing.

It's been a long time since Indy stole my look. Thirty odd years is a long time. 

I think now is the time for me to take back into my Old School uniform again. 

Screw Indiana Jones. I'm taking my look back.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY