WHEN EVERYBODY WENT HATLESS

WHEN EVERYBODY WENT HATLESS(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) WHEN EVERYBODY WENT HATLESS


At the end of 1966 in my junior year during the winter of my discontent over hopeless crushes, racial rumblings, failing grades, savage yearnings, and just down the line Vietnam,
Evan's crisp attitude
washed clean
this spring blossom
mired too long
in the gulag
where a swift kick
in the chops
felt like nothing
compared to the rush
of a quill feather
tickling my ass.

I was a fool
yet tough enough
to stay out of the way
of the man with the golden arm
panicking in needle park,
until Evan put on a cocky front
with connections I could only wish for.

He was more nuanced
than brave,
cool and discreet,
and never flashy,
a kind of ladies man
without the matinee idol good looks.

Evan introduced me to Mason
a name rich in irony
considering his distaste for his mother
and a father he couldn't stomach
the harbor font source
of his sullen bitterness
and drunken zeal.

It was another year
before I returned with Mason
to his old man's house
and there I discovered
when he wasn't holed up
in his tool shed
that I preferred
his pop's stoicism
over his mother's nervous chatter
though I devoured with pleasure
her fresh picked cherries
in her deep dish pies.

It was the dark bright heart
of the manic moon child decade
When Everybody Went Hatless
of never quite knowing what just hit ya,
grooving to the static of an AM radio
playing songs of love, loss, loneliness
and longing complicated by the betrayal
and the freaked out, juiced up,
loaded down country western twang
of outlaw long haul drivers.

That scene we emphatically belittled
cruising the hood,
cutting class,
crashing the parties,
scoring the deal,
stoking the fire,
smoking the brick,
licking the tab,
dropping the dot,
making the girl,
getting the high,
and hitting the road
before the women went braless
and everybody went hatless
driving the milliners out of business
and into a panhandler's existence.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
April 2010