If you want to get ahead get a hat went the advert and my headdress of choice was always a Davy Crockett one… remember the Alamo.
The gung-ho soldier’s notoriety followed him around the world.
While for a time, and 150 years later, a Scottish counterpart’s fame was building just from wearing the racoon skin.
The furry hat with its instantly recognisable tail was a feature.
On the head of the editor of the Aberdeen University newspaper around town.
A tail of Aberdeen and Canada
It had been my parents’ idea after returning from Canada for my brother’s wedding…
For those cold north-east of Scotland winters.
But it soon became a fashion statement (at least for me) and one of my staff had a laugh at my expense when they took over my mantle.
And modelled me up, and remember this was the Eighties, in racoon hat.
Which they called ‘Lola’ and long johns next to a piano.
All of which was meant to tickle the funny bones and ivories for that week’s edition.
But it grew legs when the diarist for the Glasgow Herald fell upon the story and carried it in that journal, which my parents read.
Hat’s the boy
Modelling’s loss was journalism’s gain,
And almost 40 years later I am still scribbling although in different head gear.
Any one of my bandanas I have picked up on my travels.
I still keep an eye out for Davy Crockett hats and found one a mile high in of all places Denver in Colorado.
But I dare say there will Davy hats aplenty in the town where he is most closely associated, San Antonio in Texas.
Recreating the Alamo
For San Antonians today, February 23, is always special because that was when back in 1836, during the Texas war for independence.
When Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna began a siege of the Alamo.
It was captured after 13 days and it, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and the gang, all became a symbol of heroic resistance to Texans.
This year and in a grand tradition the delegates from San Antonio will be flying the flag for their town.
Usually it’s as a stand among hundreds of others at the American Travel Fair.
But this year they will be hosting the event.
And we will go through the usual badinage, or bandananage.
Where I ask them again and again what happened there in 1836 and they play along saying Remember the Alamo.