The Fedora

          

 I love the new fedoras that the kids wear.  They are short brimmed and can be wildly colourful.  You need to be a certain age to get away with it.  That’s okay because music and clothes are part of what defines a generation.

          For me, the real fedora was the one that my father wore.  A grey full brim model that sported a black band and a small blue feather.  Worn at a jaunty angle on a rather large head, it wasn’t always easy for him to find his hat size.  It went along with his business suit, trench coat, and sample case.  He sold greeting cards to the headquarter stores like Eaton’s and Simpson’s in downtown Toronto.  Sometimes he would take shortcuts by using the alleys.  In the old days the city was known as Toronto the Good, however on this dreary early winter’s day that was questionable.

          He was getting older then.  I was still living at home but not for much longer.  Maybe his age made him look like a good mark.  Personally I wouldn’t have chosen anyone with a 6 foot one height and a 34 inch waist to pick on.  The assailant must have been a bit of a monster himself for when he approached from behind and left, he was able to lean his right elbow into my dad’s neck while his girlfriend grabbed at his shoulder with both of her hands.  While the ultimatum was being delivered the sample case got shifted from right hand to left.  A sample case is like a leather brief case on steroids.  It carries your promotional products and your order books.  You keep it clean and shiny like your shoes.  It doesn’t get set down on anything but carpet.

          While the attackers probably hadn’t considered was that their target might have been trained in what is known as “black hand” techniques due to a brief stint in the special forces as part of a project that involved being dropped behind enemy lines via gliders and creating pre D-Day havoc.  The invasion day got moved up and the project got scrapped, but not before certain motor pathways got ingrained.  My guess would be that if you blinked you would have missed the two fingers of the right hand being thrust up just under the solar plexus of the attacker.  The result of this sort of blow leaves you trying to throw up violently while trying to breathe at the same time. (By the way, do this wrong by even so much as an inch and you will spend the rest of your life in jail.)  The case switched back.

          So there he was.  His left hand holding his puking and gasping assailant up by the back of his neck while his right hand held both the sample case and female accomplice.  Now what do you do?  Why you rob them of course.  He took every cent that they had, which wasn’t much of course, because otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to steal from him now would they?  When he told me this (don’t tell your mother) over a beer at the end of the work day, I was horrified.

          “You robbed them!!!”

          “Yeah, there’s a Sally Ann’s right on Queen Street.”

          My, but my father loved to donate to the Salvation Army. I’ll bet he gave one of his little half smiles as he pushed the money into the glass bowl.

          I don’t think they make a fedora, or the man who wore it, like this anymore.  Different times, I guess.