If you haven’t read the other two Clown Nose stories that precede this one, go HERE for the first one. There is a link in the first to the second and a link back to this blog from the second..

OMG. I actually had a hat like that right there handy? Well, no, actually, it was hanging on a coat rack in my bedroom. There is a story to this hat. Bob, the man who was to become my husband,  gave it to me the first Christmas after we met.  Understand, it was a very expensive  handmade Hannabird hat I had admired at an art and craft fair in Santa Monica.  (But note that I hadn’t bought it.)

I have only worn it once, when skiing, but it has accompanied me to Mexico where you can see it has finally come in handy, but only as an afterthought.

After wheeling the desk chair that I  had propelled myself out to the kitchen in so I’d have a place to sit for the picture on a level with  my sculpted accomplice (a Julie Mackey piece–also a gift from Bob) I then rolled myself back to my desk. I’d had a sore back all day and there was something about that activity that actually eased the back pain even though it had been painful propelling myself with my bent legs in a sitting position.

Then, upon surveying the photos of the first photo shoot,  I realized how boring my hairdo was in comparison with my sculpted friend, and my mind flashed on the perfect possibility and off to the bedroom I went. In lieu of moving the desk chair back to the kitchen, I moved a chair from the dining room, perched upon it and the picture above is the result.

The first picture below, obviously, is of the chair. The second picture is of the cat, expressing a bit of a shocked expression upon spying me in my hat for the first time. And, just  in case you are wondering what Bob gave my mother, who was visiting me in L.A. for Christmas that year, I swear this is true.  He gave her Phyllis Diller’s fur coat!  She (Ms. Diller, not my mother) had donated it to me for an auction at the Venice Poetry center when I was in charge of collecting donations. At the auction, my mother had bid on it but lost the bid to someone else and was so disappointed. (Bob had told the auctioneer he would up any bid by $10 until the last person stopped bidding, so no one had any idea who had actually “won” the coat.) It was blond with curly long fur and a big satin bow at the neck. Imagine her delight when she opened her Xmas gift and it was THE coat!  “Marry the man!” she said, and I did. The only place my mother ever wore the coat was to the next Halloween party she went to, but that was of no importance. She died owning Phyllis Diller’s fur coat.

The Chair

Mom in Phyllis Diller’s Coat

Click on the three photos above to enlarge.

That said, you would not believe me if I told you the number of albums and bags and boxes of photos I had to go through to find this photo of my mom. I gave up and was packing them all up again when I decided to take one more look through the albums–and believe me, there are dozens of them! I found it in a paper bag of loose pages I’d meant to put into an album ten years ago. And there she was.  I have no idea what happened to Phyllis Diller’s coat, but the story of how I obtained it is a story for another day. . . .