Earliest Pop's hat?

This photo dates from 1956, and judging by the cool weather attire, I should be five years old. That's my brother in the watch cap (14) and my sister (2) looking on in amusement as I have just been finned by a not-dead-yet sand bass.

I can't quite tell what my hat (and jacket) are saying here. At first glance, I look like one of Brando's motorcycle hoods in The Wild One (Marlon himself?), but more likely this is an attempt to emulate one of my childhood heroes, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle of The Tokyo Raid fame (Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo).

However, if you consider that my brother's attire looks to have been influenced by On The Waterfront, it might be safe to guess that my mother had a thing for Brando.

Texican Immigrant Laborer.

Cleaning off the roof after the spring-fall of twigs, branches, and dead animals. After almost two centuries in Texas, my gene pool from 100,000 +/- years in Scotland and Bavaria has yet to adapt to the land I have arrived in.

This sweat band-less straw hat does the best job of absorbing sweat of anything I have ever used. A hat's sweat band always blocks the sweat, causing it to pool up and drain into my eyes, driving me blind with rage and stinging salt. But with the sweat band removed, the straw in this hat draws the sweat up into the crown and out the brim, evaporating and cooling my head.

This is the intended design of a straw hat, ruined by improvements.

Hard headed Kraut.

This is one of my several bicycle crash helmets. Probably one of the least functional hats I own, and the only one that my wearing is mandated by law. It's crash-design speed is approximately 15 mph, and yet if I were to simply fall over backwards, my head (based upon my 6'1" stature) would hit the ground at over 20 mph.

It doesn't keep the cold and wet out in the winter, and doesn't do a good job of letting the heat and sweat out in the summer time. Its effectiveness at protecting me from head injury is still debatable, but it does add to my road visibility (if reducing my ability to see just slightly), and it probably serves its best use in helping protect me if I fall off my bike when I am getting on or off it at a standstill (not an unlikely scenario for a klutz like me).

Whatever. I guess I'm just a slave to fashion (and the law).

The original Pop's Hat revisited.

That's June Anne LaGrone (granddaughter, and namesake of my sister and mother). I walked into the room, and she yelled "HAT!" and grabbed it off my head and put it on hers.