"Hat Extravaganza" features Roberta Walker's collection

Until this past Saturday, Roberta Walker had shared her collection of more than 150 hats mostly only one at a time.

 

“I wear them to church on Sundays,” she explains.

 

Not that no one ever sees her collection. She describes display cases in the Ellendale area home where she and her husband Roger live. There she enjoys setting out various hats along with matching accessories like gloves or jewelry. “I like to mix and match them,” she says of the displays, mentioning that she changes them out every now and then just for the simple pleasure of doing so.

 

“There’s something about them that I find very special,” she says. “They’re not only fun to wear; they’re fun to look at.”

 

Walker, 80, shared her collection with more than 40 people who attended a women’s fellowship gathering the morning of Saturday, Sept. 27 at Waseca’s Faith United Methodist Church, located along the west shore of Clear Lake.

 

To prepare for her talk, she spent many hours selecting the hats she would like to place on display, delivering them to town in numerous trips with a car stacked full of hat boxes, then arranging them appealingly on about 10 display tables in the church basement. Along with that, she placed a hat and some accessories on each of the tables occupied by guests. Other members of her “women’s circle” prepared cake and coffee for the event, and even made small table favors shaped like elegant hats.

 

“The women’s fellowship meetings are something we’ve really come to enjoy,” Walker said of the fairly new monthly event. Presentations like hers and an earlier one by church member Sherry Jones regarding buttons take place maybe three or four times a year.

 

During a presentation which lasted about an hour, Walker shared that she believes her love of hats may stem from her childhood, when women frequently wore hats in public, and always to church.

 

Her first experiences were with Easter bonnets; she remembers getting a new one nearly every year throughout her childhood. The next consistent exposure, she said, came when she entered the health care field. Back at that time, nurses were expected to dress all in white and to wear a sort of starched white arch on their heads.

 

The collection of showy, colorful hats which was displayed on Sept. 27 began, Walker believes, in the mid-1960s, when she bought a wide-brimmed felt hat in navy blue. She was about to take her first airline flight and felt like dressing up, so she put together a color-matched outfit that included her dress, shoes and gloves.

 

“You might think I have a lot of money invested in my collection,” she told guests. “But if you know anything about me, you know I like a bargain.”

 

She went on to tell that she stops at thrift stores whenever she gets a chance, and that “my car practically turns itself when I see a garage sale sign.” One of her best buys was a time when she bought six stylish hats for only $5. She mentions that people who know of her collection often give her hats as well.

 

She told the story of one time she was at a thrift store with a family member. “I saw this one hat,” she said lightheartedly. “But she told me no, there was no way I was going to buy it. So I didn’t.”

 

On the trip homeward, though, she couldn’t stop thinking about the hat.

 

“So I called her, and I told her she had to go buy that hat and send it to me.”

 

The group let loose an energetic, simultaneous “Oooh,” when Walker lifted the hat in question out of a nearby box. Brimless, it was draped with a gauzy, transparent fabric. The color was a luminescent lime green.

 

“When I have trouble finding a shirt or a jacket that matches a hat,” she went on to say, “I sometimes just wear black and then add a necklace or other jewelry that matches.”

 

She looked again at the lime green hat.

 

“Anyone from church can tell you, I wear a lot of black outfits.”

 

Walker mentioned she enjoys wearing her hats because they help her feel stylish and unique. Women sometimes compliment her hats, but the really interesting observations and comments tend to come from men. She mentions one that a fellow called a “spaghetti hat,” and another which was dubbed a “bird’s nest.”

 

She went on to say she enjoys having the hats as something of a personal trademark, and takes pride that her two granddaughters love wearing her hats when they visit, and when they accompany her to church.

 

“Now they’re starting to take them home with them,” she says. “They live rather far away.” Granddaughter Jensen Pfander, 19, now lives in Iowa, but had previously lived in Texas. Granddaughter Sophia O’Brien, 7, lives in Brazil.

 

Walker had also looked up some etiquette regarding the wearing of hats. Social convention, she said, dictates that men should remove their hats when they come indoors; this includes everything from a casual “baseball” hat to a jaunty fedora to a cowboy hat. Men’s hats should either be placed on a coat rack along with coats or jackets, or held in the hands or on the lap.

 

Women, on the other hand, are expected to keep their hats on, ”unless they would be an inconvenience to someone nearby, or they might obstruct someone’s view,” Walker summarized. It is acceptable, she shared, for women to place their hats on a table if they choose to remove them indoors.

 

“Don’t wear a hat that’s too small for you,” she also warned during her presentation. “When they’re tight, you get a headache.”