The Panama Hat Trail Page 22

  Hats to be lacquered were dunked in a vat, then spin-dried and put on a shelf in a huge rotating oven for a quarter hour. Lacquered or not, all hats were fitted with sweatbands and some with eyelets. One worker lined up each band with the imprint of its destination store, while another inserted a polyester reed through every one. The two ends of the band were linked with a tiny hook, and a little decorative bow was stitched on to each band. Finally they were sewn inside the hats—upside-down, so they could be neatly turned into place.

  Outside hatbands were hooked around the crowns, held in place by three pieces of double-stick cellophane tape. The off-white brisa fashion Panama from Ecuador was dressed in a blue-and-white band. An adhesive sticker identifying the brand name was placed on a small griddle for a few seconds, then flipped into the center of the inside of each hat. “You have to be pretty accurate,” a supervisor explained, “because you only get one chance. You need a good eye.” At last, the hats were placed over metal molds to give the inside bands a more finished appearance. Then came inspection, spot check, and packing.

  “Occasionally we restructure the location of the work stations for more efficiency,” said Rae Crookless in quality control. “If we get a lot of orders for dress hats next year, we’ll rearrange operations. The positioning of the workers here depends on fashions out in the marketplace.” At full capacity, Resistol turns out three thousand straw hats a day.

  The hat bodies from Ecuador, now handsome, finished, and ready for retail sale, had taken eight days to wend their way through the production line. Months earlier hat shops all over the country had learned their price for fashion Panamas from Resistol’s sales representatives: $225 a dozen, a five-fold increase over Dorfzaun’s price. What started as a shaggy hat body from the Andes for $.65 had become part of mainstream American commerce at a wholesale cost of $18.75.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  LASTING FRIENDSHIP

  When Consolidated Freightways dropped off twenty boxes of Resistol hats at the Western Hat Works in San Diego, Marty Anfangar checked the shipment against the invoice and started stacking the new inventory. Anfangar, in his early forties, is a third-generation hatter. Around the shop he wears a hip-length apron as he moves between his workbench and customers. His grandfather Morris, who came to the United States from Poland, settled in San Diego after serving his new country as an army hat renovator in World War I. He opened his first hat store on Fourth Avenue between A Street and B Street downtown when Warren G. Harding was president. His brother soon opened another store nearby.

  The neighborhood thrived with businesses catering to a growing city, especially to maritime commerce and sailors on shore leave. “We did all our own work then,” recalled Lew Anfangar, who grew up working in his father’s hat shop. “One store would flange the hat, and the other would block it. When I was seven and eight years old I’d walk down the street pushing racks of hats between stores for my father and my uncle. We had a full-time seamstress then. My mother sewed too. We’d put the hats outdoors on the back porch and spin-dry them. We even had a gas-filled dry box.”

  Lew took over the business after his father’s death. Although the store has had five different locations, they’ve all been within a few blocks of each other in a neighborhood which, during the mid-1980s, was undergoing revitalization. Within one block of Fifth Avenue and E Street, the Western Hat Works location since 1976, you can buy pornography and hardware and eat any of five foreign foods. Public baths and neighborhood poker parlors cater to men who live in nearby flophouses and frequent tawdry burlesque theaters. With the recent round of urban renewal, sidewalk cafés and upscale restaurants have brought suburban clientele to the Gaslamp Quarter, as the neighborhood is known, but police still mop up after barroom brawls, and the after-work sidewalk crowd has a shiftless and menacing character.

  “There was a time when you could walk around downtown at any hour without fear of being mugged,” Marty said between customers. “That isn’t so anymore. The scum of the earth come in now and then. We used to be open until six o’clock. Now we’re out of here every day at five.” The door buzzer sounded, announcing the entrance of another customer. Marty went to wait on him, and Lew continued: “He doesn’t allow anyone to give me any back talk. One time a guy came in acting a little gruff. Marty chased after him. I leapt on him to keep him back, and he ran out of the store with me on his back.” He looked across the store at his son. “I wish he’d smile more.”

  When hats were part of every man’s apparel, San Diego boasted seven different hat-renovating establishments. Western Hat Works is the only one left. The strength of its reputation far outweighs that of the neighborhood, and hat buyers from all over the metropolitan area—including Tijuana, Mexico—regularly find their way to the store. Besides the usual assortment of caps and street and western hats, the Anfangars stock hats from Czechoslovakia, South Africa, and England. They can oblige the rare customer who asks for a silk collapsible opera hat from Austria. A steady stream of drill instructors from the Marine Corps Recruitment Depot drop off their brown Smokey the Bear hats for reshaping and cleaning.

  The store’s upper two floors carry stock ready to move downstairs when space becomes available. The back of the third floor holds old, forgotten hats that look like they’d be resplendent with a good dusting. “I hate doing inventory in that place,” said Lyle Hatch, an old friend and Resistol’s California salesman for many years. “I’m always afraid all those boxes will come tumbling down on me.” Including its upstairs stock, Western Hat Works carries five thousand hats.

  “For a long time,” Lew reflected, “the Panama was the God of the industry. It was a hat of distinction. Seamen who’d sailed from Ecuadoran ports used to come in and sell them to us. Personally, I prefer the Shantung,” the imitation Panama from the Orient. “It wears better.”

  A week earlier, a fellow had walked in hoping to sell a Panama to Western Hat Works. Marty recognized it as a Montecristi fino. “The guy wanted eighty dollars for it. I bought it right away.” He lifted his prize from its balsa-wood cradle. In the marketplace of superior-grade Panamas, it was worth far more than eighty dollars. “In fact, it’s so good I’m not even sure I want to sell it. As for regular straws, you’ll always find people who’ll pay good money for a Panama when they could get a Shantung for less. The Panama is more durable.”

  On his way to work one morning from his home in the suburbs, Ray Stansbury was struck by the coming of spring. For the forty-seven-year-old pest-control company executive, that meant one thing: time to buy a new Panama hat. He didn’t know where the hats were made, but for years he had admired their workmanship. The previous weekend he’d taken an old Panama out of the closet of his home in Encinitas and worn it to Old Town. Strangers had complimented him and asked where he got it.

  Growing up on a ranch in Oklahoma, Stansbury had worn a straw hat since he was five years old. “We’d go to town to get a new one every summer. They’d be shapeless, so to soften them up for shaping we’d toss them in the horse tank.” He has not forgotten how to reshape a hat; he still does it at home. “A couple of weekends ago I dropped my fishing hat in the lake. Damn near lost it. I had to reshape it. The first thing you do is give it a real soaking. Then you lay it flat on the workshop table and put a plywood ring around it. I use one with a hole in it just big enough for the hat to fit through. When it dries to the point where it’s just damp, you can shape it with your hands any way you want. I put mine on my head so when it’s completely dry and stiffens, the crown will fit perfectly. These newer hats with thinner straw, I spray them with some starch from my wife’s ironing board. To clean them, I soak them in light detergent, then I brush them.”

  Pictures and drawings of John Wayne fill the wall of Stansbury’s den at home. A half-dozen more line his office at work. “As the years go by, you don’t give up something you enjoy. My brother-in-law and I like to find hat shops whenever we go out of town. We buy straw hats and give them to each other or to friends. You k
now, a man looks so different in a hat. To give another man a hat, well—there’s something about it that creates a bond. It’s a lasting friendship.”

  The day Ray Stansbury decided a new Panama was in order, he dropped in at Western Hat Works during his lunch hour. He had bought hats there before and thought they had the best selection in town. He looked at a few Shantungs, tried on a couple of natural straws, and decided on a Panama, brisa style. A blue-and-white band circled the off-white body. Sales clerk Alicia Del Rio rang it up: $35, plus $2.10 state sales tax.

  I told Ray a little of the story behind the hat and how much the weavers in the Andes earned. “Really?” he said. “That’s some markup.” Instead of putting his new Panama hat in a box or a bag, he wore it out the door and then for the rest of the day.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For a book that deals with life along the equator, I benefited by sound advice from people as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Santiago, Chile. Suggestions came in the form of books to read, ideas to consider, and friends to meet. Seasoned travelers recommended towns to visit and those to avoid; experienced translators gave nuance in English to poems in Spanish.

  The people of Ecuador, whether on the coast, in the Andes, or in the jungle, went far out of their way to show me their culture. They opened their doors and shared their knowledge; to all of them I am grateful. I remember them well, and at one stop on the trail found that they remembered me, too. I had spent some time in the wilderness with the men who harvest the straw from which Panama hats are woven. One year later I returned to the same place, and reintroduced myself. “I came here a year ago,” I told them. “Perhaps you recall me from then.”

  “Of course we remember you,” a man replied. “You were the last one to visit us.”

  For their equatorial hospitality, John and Sam Miller deserve special gratitude, along with Miriam González and John Daane, and Shari Villarosa. To the following friends—both new and old—whose counsel and support kept me on the trail, a tip of the Panama and un abrazo: Dan Anderson, Joe Brenner, Kathryn Coe, Olga Fisch, Kurt Dorfzaun, Michael Earney, Enrique Grosse-Luemern, Charles W. Grover, John and Mary Lou Hay, Mercedes Herrera Ayamar, Lynn Hirschkind, Robert Houston, Anita Hughes, Milton Johnson, Charles A. Miller, Nick Mills, Jacqueline de Munizaga, Boyd Nicholl and Laurie Kintzele, J. Enrique Ojeda, María Olano, Fabián Peñaherrera, Valerina Quintana, Osvaldo Viteri, Ion Youman, Stefan Schinzinger, Martha Sowerwine, Moritz Thomsen, and Donna Waldman.

  Appreciation is also due the hat companies in Ecuador and the United States. They opened their factories and their ledgers to me without once looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing.

  —T.M.

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