My lovely wife, Elizabeth, found my (second) Davy Crockett hat. The story of the first one is tragic.

Okay, if you insist.

For you wee bairns, in the 1950s, Walt Disney ran a series of wildly imaginative episodes on the life of Davy Crockett, who was played by Fess Parker, who later made immense amounts of wine in Santa Barbara County. Davy wore a coonskin cap whose origins—poor innocent eviscerated raccoons— should have horrified us. But Disney made gazillions of dollars on the assembly-line production of knockoff coonskin caps made of petrochemicals, not raccoons, and my parents got me one.

It wasn’t hard to imagine being a frontiersman like Davy. Elm Street crossed the end of our street, Sunset Drive, and everything beyond was sand dunes and eucalyptus trees until you finally reached the Grover City city limits, where everything was sand dunes and eucalyptus trees until you hit civilization, represented by the Blinking Owl Bar.

It was important, this hat was. Living on the wild frontier during the Cold War made that hat a powerful symbol. Davy Crockett was a 100% American, the obverse to Godless Communism. Our other Disney hero was Wernher von Braun, the rocket scientist, who exuberantly described the future of space travel, a subject in which he had expertise, having made Nazi rockets that obliterated entire English neighborhoods.

But Dr. von Braun was our Nazi, by golly. We nabbed him before the Commies did.

But that’s another story.

I was four. I was pretty much a Davy Crockett fanatic. I don’t remember much about being five because that occurred after the Disney episode where Davy got kilt (proper Tennessee spelling) at the Alamo by hordes of Marxist-Leninists disguised as the Mexican Army.

That was a desert year, being five.

But I DO remember wearing my Davy Crockett hat to the Margaret Harloe Elementary School Open House in 1956. My big brother was a Harloe student who had finally decided to come down from the flagpole he’d climbed to try to escape the first day of school. They’d decided to wait until he got hungry.

That’s another story, too.

But what I remember about that night was the immensely tall Cub Scout–he must’ve been at least 4′ 6″– in his navy blue uniform standing at the entry way to the covered walkway near the principal’s office.

The flagpole is still there, as is the walkway, if you’d like to take colored chalk, measuring tape and a camera there to reconstruct the crime.

Anyway, this is what happened: This Cub Scout stood in the hallway, his legs slightly parted, and began to question the seriousness of my Davy Crockett hat.

This is true: I have always had a hot temper. That comes from Dad’s side of the family, implacable Ozark Plateau Confederates and roughnecks (one of Dad’s uncles had inserted a Taft oilfield camp cook into a boiler after a particularly bad meal), though not at the same time.

So this was a matter of Ozark Plateau honor, right here at Margaret Harloe Elementary School in 1956–the eve of Sputnik–and, given the historical times, I reacted as my ancestors would have reacted.

I punched the Cub Scout. Right in the stomach.

However, being a little fellow, my punch didn’t quite reach his stomach. He got a full-force enraged Davy Crockett Fan Club overhead left direct hit in the groin.

I remember my satisfaction at watching him double over like a folding jacknife.

What I remember next is the searing pain of my mother grabbing my earlobe and guiding me, through a force she light-heartedly called Friendly Muscle Persuasion, back to our home on Sunset Drive.

It’s not a far walk unless you’re being pulled by your earlobe.

When we got home, I was read three Riot Acts. I had brought dishonor on our family, on Margaret Harloe Elementary and on the Cub Scouts USA, a double-whammy since Mom was also a Den Mother.

Before I was confined to my room, I did one more hot-tempered thing. We’d come home to Sunset Drive with a fire Dad had built just before the Open House. It was a good one by the time we got home.

So I threw my Davy Crockett hat into the fireplace.

We all marveled at what I’d done but even more at the violence of the blue flames the burning hat produced and then, a moment later, at the ghastly smell. I would wonder, years later, if Chernobyl smelled like my Davy Crockett hat had.

Anyway, I did my time in my room. I came out chastened, I admit, but afterward, as I’ve said, they got Davy at the Alamo and being five was interminable.

Sometimes Mom would catch me singing mournfully, just under my breath

Day-vee…
Dav-y Crockett
King of the wild fron-tier…


But, thanks to Elizabeth, sixty-four years later, the wounds have healed. I’m back, Davy.