How to Bury a Cowboy Hat

[a week after writing this post, I heard a program about the late Janis Joplin on KUT in Austin, Texas. It included a version of Happy Trails recorded as a birthday greeting for John Lennon. It was the last recording she made before her death. A worthy candidate.]

Prominently displayed in the window of Horse Feathers in Taos, New Mexico is a sign that promises a decent burial for a hat that has been well loved but can no longer serve its partner. As part of the service, Horsefeathers promises that one hymn will be included. I happen to be the proud partner of a straw hat that has many hoof prints, a menagerie of unusual stains and no discernible shape that has sequestered itself in the trunk of my car rather than allow itself to be seen in such deplorable condition. I have long considered putting the haberdashery down but thoughts of a dumpster burial for such a long term companion carry only a sense of revulsion.

A word about the Horse Feathers emporium might be helpful here as it will allow insight into my feeling that I had found the noble end to a valiant friend. Other signs promise previously “loved” cowboy hats and boots. The sense of respect for the accouterments of cowboying is everywhere from the storefront to the shops interior rigging. Lifetimes devoted working and caring for large animals are reduced to displays of the essential tools of the profession. Hats and boots are the symbolic testimony to the west and the lore of the cowboy. The storefront is a fair representation of what is on the inside.

Graduation Rituals and Fathers Day (last time)

Mothers Day, Fathers Day and Graduation Day are all spring rituals, days that allow us to generate more stories that define a culture. Like many of our rituals, it seems that the more we spend on the occasion, the less it means. Conan O'Brien recently gave the commencement address at Dartmouth College and congratulated the graduates by pointing out that they had achieved something that only 92 per cent of their peers had done. If he had been talking to a high school graduating class, he would have been closer to the right number, but his observation remains valid.

There are still a couple of days to add your Fathers Day stories to Story Chip before we begin the early celebration period of the day in 2012. This is certainly a chance for new graduates to thank their parents in a manner commensurate with the completion of a 4 year degree and your story is likely to be better received than the commencement address your parents heard while you were graduating, unless of course you went to Dartmouth. 

Road to Father's Day Stories

Some fathers never tell their stories. Some, like Michael Sullivan in Road to Perdition, keep their professional life separate from their family life as a protection. Most of us do not have excuses of such dramatic proportion but there are an ever large number of men and women who have divorced and find their stories lost or ignored in the emotion of separating a marriage with children. Many marriages end with the adults' alienation thrust into the core history of the children.

Parental Alienation Syndrome, PAS, was first described in the 1980's when therapists started seeing children of divorced families who were severely alienated from one of the parents for little or no apparent reason. Dr. Richard Gardner wrote the first articles and continues to be vilified and praised almost 10 years after his death. The scientific validity of PAS likely would not be such a big issue if it had not made its way into the same custody battles that foster the condition to begin with.