A Hat on the Bed

The other day when Martina and I were packing up to go to Fredericksburg, she tossed my ball cap on the bed. Although I never said a word, I gently picked up the hat and put it on the nightstand. Somehow, after all of these years, I still carry the old superstition about putting a hat on the bed within me. 

When I was a little boy, I remember a story about someone blaming the death of a family member on a cowboy hat being place on a bed. After hearing that, I never intentionally allowed one of my hats to be on a bed, and especially not a cowboy hat, for it could not just bring bad luck but actual calamity. Today, of course, keeping hats off the bed is more of an old custom than an actual superstition, but then, maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, that old irrational worry has never left.

Here is Jason Boland, who I once had the pleasure of seeing open for Merle Haggard at John T. Floore's Country Store, talking about hats on the bed and singing about luck.