The Frenchman Catching Hat
by Glenda White

The woman with the purple pen perched on the chair beside the tall steel- topped table in the Coffee Conspiracy. She sipped a latte, sighed, and settled down to write. No one interrupted her when she wrote here, and being surrounded by the art of friends and neighbors was soothing. The Coffee Conspiracy had been part of a slowly developing Renaissance for this end of the small town of Berea, Kentucky. She liked supporting this venture. On weekends aspiring poets, musicians, and the like could meet and try their wings.

The purple pen began to move..and the story of the Frenchman Catching Hat began to take shape on the page. The woman with the purple pen had been invited by an old friend to visit the South of France. She was delighted with the opportunity both to visit a country she had not seen and be with a beloved friend.

When she arrived in France, her host suggested a visit to the nearby town.
Market Day at Vaison La Romaine interested her. Wandering about in a strange town and seeing what their market offered was one of her pleasures; she was eager to see if she could get by with her ancient French, which consisted mainly of musical terms.

It was a sunny day, with a breeze that brought smells of fresh bread, cheese, roasting meat, and herbs. Around her streamed the bustle of Market Day. She peered at everything, purchasing a number of small souvenirs.

Then she saw them, the Straw Hats! Not your garden variety straw hats, but hats with a French flair! The straw was elegantly braided, with a brim the size of a cartwheel to keep the sun away. A wide pastel ribbon around the crown caught up a dainty spray of wheat straw and dried flowers, dyed to match the ribbon.

"I'll try one on, just for fun." She placed it carefully atop her head. She selected one with ribbons and flowers of pale apricot, then decided that another color might better suit her ebony and silver hair. She sorted carefully through the piles of straw hats until there before her was the Perfect Straw Hat! Its ribbon and flowers were a sturdy, yet romantic pastel blue.

"And just who do you think you are, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?" her Inner Critic jeered. "You could get a straw hat in the U.S., if you needed one!" "Furthermore," it continued, "you certainly do NOT need a gigantic straw hat to wrestle with on a transatlantic flight! " Sadly, she removed the wonderful hat, and tenderly placed it on the table.

Then, from somewhere deep inside, a fierce determination roared to the surface. Wheeling around to the table where the hats shone in the sun, she snatched up the blue-ribboned hat her heart had so yearned for, and placed it firmly on her head.

"Shut Up!" she said to her Inner Critic. " Iām buying this hat, because I want it, and thatās that! "

She paid for the hat, and in a matter of seconds, she felt it, the transformation that all women undergo when acquiring a new and attractive piece of clothing . But this was of a greater order of magnitude.

She threw her shoulders back, moving confidently, aware that the straw hat had worked some kind of alchemy. As she continued her stroll around the market, there was a new authority in her stride, and she made purchases in her antique French without a qualm.

After a time she walked up the street to a sidewalk cafe. Entering, she found a table in the crowded restaurant. As she attempted to pull out her chair, the enormous hat brim brushed the shoulders of a man at the next table.

"Oh, Je m'excuse," she said, smiling apologetically.

The gentleman seated across from the man she had brushed smiled and said, in French, "Oh, that's ok...and it is a beautiful hat".

"Merci", she responded. The speaker was attractive-- tall and slender, with wheat colored hair and grey eyes. She liked the laugh lines around his eyes. He said something else to her in French, she was unable to translate. She told him shyly in his language that she did not understand, that she was American, and that she didn't speak much French.

He continued to speak in French, this time more slowly. . "What part of America do you come from?"

"Kentucky", she replied.

"I have never been to Ken Too Kee," he said, fascinating her with the kiss shape his lips formed as he spoke the unfamiliar word. "But I have been to Wyoming."

"Wyoming is very beautiful." She was grateful that the conversation was simple enough to continue with her limited store of his language. Then when her French vocabulary failed, and no one at the nearby tables could help in translation, the men rose to leave. Her handsome stranger extended his hand toward her, saying, "My name is Monsieur Faucon."

She offered her hand, saying her name, and before she knew it, the stranger took her hand, turned it over, kissed it gently.

"Au revoir, he said, with a wink and a smile, and strolled out.

She sat for a few minutes, reflecting on her adventure. "I will tell the ladies at the Coffee Conspiracy about my Frenchman Catching Hat, and find a special place to keep it when I get home," she thought. "Surely thereās magic in a hat that causes a stranger to kiss your hand..even when you are a 64 year old widow." She laughed softly to herself, and finished her lunch.

The woman with the purple pen sighed, stretched, and smiled. She picked up the wide brimmed straw hat trimmed with blue ribbons, wheat, and straw flowers from the table, sat it at a jaunty angle on her head, picked up her writing supplies, and sauntered out of the Coffee Conspiracy humming softly.