Lidsville

I woke up this morning with a post from a friend in Ohio, featuring her latest child. The child is cute as a button (although not quite as cute as my stepdaughter’s slightly older child (sorry, but it’s all relative if you catch my meaning)). The text accompanying the photo had to do with the child having a big head – in the 98th percentile. I have suffered from having a physically big head – big enough so that I cannot wear one of those “One Size Fits All” baseball caps which almost everyone around me is able to wear.

This morning’s post from my friend in Ohio ties in with a couple of discussions both at home and on the internet about hats, and heads, and the place they hold in our hearts.

Not to say that I cannot wear hats. I have one hanging on the small rack by my front door. It’s one I got as a gift from my daughter a few years back when she worked at “The Mad Hatter,” a hat store in Savannah Georgia. It was the second hat I’ve gotten as a gift from the same store. A few years prior to the current hat, I was on a visit to Savannah with the first wife when we wandered into The Mad Hatter. She was aware of the size of my head – and took it upon herself to kid me about it almost incessantly. I told her when we walked into the shop that if she could find a hat which would fit me, I would wear it.

I walked out of the Mad Hatter wearing a Tilley Hat. My size.

The Tilley Hat is distinctive. Made in Canada, it’s probably the only hat I know of which comes with an owner’s manual. The hat itself is seriously overbuilt – the owner’s manual is seriously tongue-in-cheek. One of the instructions with the hat is if one encounters someone else wearing a Tilley Hat, they are to compliment the other person as being someone with good taste and distinction.

When I ran across a photo of a naturist wearing nothing but a Tilley Hat (and nothing else) over the weekend, I naturally complimented him on his good taste and distinction.

The other tie-in to hats came on discussions on Saturday and Sunday. A friend in Rhode Island was telling me about what her daughter did on Saturday mornings. Naturally, for a child that age, she loved watching what cartoons are still running on network television. On Sunday, my better half, for no discernable reason, started singing the theme song from H.R. Puffenstuff, Sid and Marty Croft’s ‘Live Action’ puppet show from the early to mid-seventies.

A bit of background – Back in the sixties, Saturday mornings were a cartoon ghetto, mostly geared as attention getters so Kellogg’s and General Mills could sell their sugary cereals. There was protest about the glut of cartoons, so networks wound up going to the Croft brothers and other producers to come up with whimsical live action shows to appeal to kids.

One of those shows was “Lidsville” – a magical place where everyone other than the three main characters was a hat of some sort. And what a cast for the main characters. The chief protagonist was an overly curious teenager who was sucked into Lidsville, played by Butch Patrick. Yeah. THAT Butch Patrick, better known as “Eddie” from The Munsters! He was assisted by “Witchie-Poo,” played to perfection by Billie Burke. Ms. Burke also appeared in H.R. Puffenstuff. She did a good job as a witch. The chief antagonist was played by Charles Nelson Reilly. No, it should be that the chief antagonist was “Camped Up” by Charles Nelson Reilly (is there anyone from that era that didn’t catch on that CNR was Gay as a Maypole?).

I recall watching Lidsville and immensely enjoying the few episodes I managed to catch. Given the size of my head, Lidsville is, perhaps, the only other place where I could find a hat which fits me!

Be Seeing You!