Buying a hat

Fedex has it now. It's on a truck somewhere north of Houston. There's no turning back. I've gone and bought a hat.

Not like my beloved Peruvian wool knit hat from the Linden Hills Coop that's incredibly warm and silly looking. Or like the real French beret made in the Pyrenees (not some hideous Australian knockoff) that I bought for my wife at Saks. She never wears it so she gave it to me, and I never wear it because I look exactly right in it, which makes me feel as if I've stepped out of central casting and I'm waiting for my baguette and bicycle from the prop girl.

Not even a New York Times logo baseball cap, bought at The New York Times itself, bought twice even so each son would get one and then inherited twice when neither wore it more than once.

No, I'm talking about the kind of hat that friends and strangers alike will see, and think, "another silly fart trying to look like Don Draper." Hah, a lot they know.

The hat adventure is an inevitable consequence of the winter coat adventure. I have a terrible electric blue down coat good for walking the dog in fifty below but I didn't have anything else. Brooks Brothers sells a double-breasted camel hair I wanted for $1300. They sell a wonderful cashmere chesterfield for $1200. (Last year their super-fancy label had a dark blue double-breasted number that was right out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production for twice those prices. I wanted it desperately, it became the beautiful girl I couldn't talk to, I gave up.)

So I went to eBay and bought a dark, dark grey, double-breasted, way-below-the-knee overcoat from Hart Schaffner & Marx, that famous Chicago brand. It was $106 plus shipping, it's in perfect condition, and even if the lapels say it's from the 1970s, I look great in it. What's more, Barack wears Hart Schaffner & Marx. But if winter in Minnesota isn't enough reason, the coat cries out for a hat.

A real hat, a fedora, the kind my father put on his head before he walked out the door with The New York Times tucked under his arm, smelling of coffee and Yardley's lavender, heading for the A train that took him to Wall Street. Fedoras are in right now, they're sprinkled liberally all over the web. You can buy one with silly little brims that makes you look like a 1950s hoodlum for $50; you can buy one with felt made of beaver fur that makes you look like a 1950s capitalist for $500.

I was paralyzed. I spent days not working, poring over the alternatives, learning the different shapes and creases and brims. I agonized over linings, sweat bands, silly little feathers, price, and, when I'd decided everything else, brand. Then I made myself buy a hat so I could return to living.

Anyway, Fedex has it, and they should be bringing it to me in a day or two. It's a real Borsalino, and if you laugh at it, I'm going to have Guido beat the crap out of you.

Stone dust

The workmen began the new patio for the house next door about a month ago. The first day or two they used the machine that makes the ground perfectly flat and very hard. It's the kind of machine you'd want to have if you were a little kid, a thumper, and so, even though it's noisy, it's hard to get mad at it. And it doesn't make a mess.

Then the men began sawing stone. No little kid would want the stone-sawing machine. It's like having a dozen giant, evil dentists drilling in your front yard, minus the screams of pain from the dozen victims. It also produces a cloud of white stone dust that floats merrily in whatever direction the wind wants. Most of the time, that's toward our house. The men did take a break for a day or two to saw brick, and that changed the dust cloud to a dried blood pinkish red. They've long since gone back to stone, but I know that, if they ever finish, there are 25 or 30 steps up from the street still to be covered in brick.

A month into the work, every window and every windowsill is coated with stone dust. We've long ago given up any thought of having a drink or eating on our front deck. The dog and cat leave stone dust footprints as they walk through the house. And when we close a screen door, the bang produces a little mushroom cloud of stone dust.

The most alarming part is that we've gotten used to it. We're like the people who live in the one-industry town who know that the exuviae from the giant factory is poisonous and ugly but who also know that complaining about it is futile. Would our lovely, polite, friendly neighbors understand if we told them how we feel? And would that stop the work? No and no.

I'm just glad I can't see our lungs.