The Davy Crockett Hat
The Range Rider and
Obviously
The Lone Ranger were musts
As I sat before a small TV,
Black and white for sure but I was wide-eyed…
Until Davy Crockett,
Obviously,
That lauded king of the wild frontier lands:
His headgear was a must for me,
Fur-trimmed with a raccoon’s tail,
But inaccessible,
Obviously…
Until, from a family of weavers,
My grandmother intervened,
Cutting a rough circle of brown material,
Her work would be hand-sewn, not machined…
Recycling an old fox-fur stole,
She attached it to the circumference
Of the russet off-cut of cloth,
To fit upon my childhood head, at my insistence…
The piece de resistance was however to follow,
For the finishing touch to impress without fail
Was her clever use of the fox’s brush
To add to my Davy Crockett hat:
Its tail…
Pete Ray
April 2018
All true…
The Range Rider ‘where the deer and the antelope play’ and The Lone Ranger were my favourite TV programmes as a small boy but when the Davy Crockett series was introduced, I fell for the rifle and the fur-trimmed hat with its raccoon tail…
Crockett was a real person of course, being a soldier, a frontier scout and indeed a politician too…
Whilst teaching about old toys in Birmingham Museum, I was able to buy a Davy Crockett hat and a toy rifle to show today’s kids what it was like for me to be a young boy in the 1950s…
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