The Moffat Museum (20 page)

Joey decided that he would sit on top of the stumpy rounded wooden pile at the corner of the left side of the pier. Boats from Lighthouse Point across the harbor tied up here. He climbed up, carefully clutching his flat paper bag.

"Do you see a boat coming?" asked Jane.

"Not yet," said Joey.

The little excursion boat went back and forth from Lighthouse Point to Savin Rock. Today some people from Lighthouse Point might want to watch Straw Hat Day here in Savin Rock, while some people here in Cranbury might want to make a big hullabaloo for the family and celebrate over there. But the boat was not in sight.

There was another sturdy pile opposite the one that Joey was sitting on. Usually huge seagulls sat on top of these piles, which were great lookout spots from where they could watch their fellow gulls with fierce and hostile eyes or fly away, screaming, to snatch a little fish from another gull's beak.

"Shoo!" said Joey to an enormous gull who wanted to sit where Joey was settling himself. He might be King Gull. Then he swooped over to the other pile and made the gull there fly off, and he settled on it. He eyed Joey and the entire world with angry beady eyes.

Joey looked down below him. Seaweed, the kind they liked to pinch and squeeze and make the water in the pods spurt out, was clinging to the piles. When the tide came in, the seaweed would be covered.

"Then it gets to look like mermaid's hair streaming in the water," said Jane.

Joey tried to see if his feet could reach the high-water mark on the pile because if they could, he would then dangle them in the water when the tide came in. But he couldn't. Jane clung to him. "Don't fall in!" she said. Rufus and Jane, since they were sitting on the pier and were closer to the water than Joey, might be able to dangle their toes in it later.

Up on his high pile, Joey held his flat paper bag tightly. Now and then a gull flew over and screamed at the sight of the bag, but Joey shooed him away.

"They smell your sandwiches," said Jane.

Joey laughed.

"What kind did you bring?" asked Rufus.

Joey just laughed again and patted his bag gently.

"Such a funny shape for sandwiches," said Jane. "A pie maybe? A surprise perhaps?"

"Yes!" said Joey. "A grand surprise!"

"I wish that big gull would stay over there where he belongs. Maybe we should eat the sandwiches, and he wouldn't bother us," said Jane. She hid her head under her skirt whenever he swooped too near. She drew her legs under her and sat on them crisscrossed.

"Some gulls do bite," she said, "for no reason at all. The art teacher ... you know the one we call 'the smiley teacher'...told us about an artist friend of hers, a great tall Dutchman. Well, he was just standing on the rocks in Rockport, Massachusetts ... that far away ... and a big gull, for no reason at all, suddenly walked up to him and bit his big bare toe that was sticking out of his sandal! Bit the toe of a famous artist from Holland! That's what that gull did!"

King Gull went back to his perch. For a while he stayed there scanning a far distant object that attracted his full attention.

"Maybe," said Rufus, "Rockport gulls bite the toes of artists. Maybe Savin Rock gulls are nicer."

"Think so?" said Jane. "Besides, I'm not an artist." She unwrapped her suntanned legs and dangled them over the water, watching her reflection rippling beneath her. They all dangled their legs over the water, and they were very happy. They were hardly aware that people had begun to arrive, a few here, a few there, all the men wearing their straw hats.

The wonderful smell of soft-shell crabs cooking in the stalls along the street behind the piers was wafted to them whether there was a breeze or not. The tempting smell hovered over them and mingled with the salt sea air.

"I'm hungry," said Rufus.

"What
is
in your bag anyway?" Jane demanded. "It's not fair not to tell us..."

"Probably a lemon meringue pie," said Rufus. "That's why he's been holding it so carefully."

Joey only laughed and gently patted it. He put the bag to his face and took a deep breath. "Um-m-m!" he said.

"I wish it had soft-shell-crab sandwiches in it," said Rufus. "Let me smell it!"

"Smell!" said Joey. "But smell carefully."

Rufus smelled the bag. Rufus always won in the game of "smells." Blindfold him, hold an onion, a peppercorn, even hard things like mace, and say, "Well, what is it, Rufus?" Rufus always got it right. Now he said as quick as a flash, "It smells like
strawl
"

Joey laughed out loud. "Want to see our lunch?" He carefully took a crisp, brand-new, clean, never-been-worn-before straw hat out of the bag ... a straw hat for Straw Hat Day.

Rufus and Jane gasped. To switch so suddenly from a lemon meringue pie to a real straw hat left them breathless. "Are you old enough to wear a straw hat?" asked Jane.

"Sure," said Joey. "I'll be sixteen on the twenty-sixth of September. Anyway, if a fella is old enough to giveth his sister away in holy matrimony—and that was way back in June—then he is old enough to giveth his straw hat to the whims and the winds of the sea breezes along with all the other men, including Mr. Pennypepper, the judge, and the First Selectman."

The hat had a bright red ribbon around the brim. It could easily be spotted when it was sent skimming over the waves. "Where'd you get it?" asked Jane.

"Crowley's. Saturday, Mrs. Crowley said to me, 'Joey. Choose a hat, any one you want. Be part of your pay. And throw it into the sea. I'll be there and I'll say that there goes Joey in one of my Crowley Department Store hats ... along with many another!'"

"Put it on!" urged Rufus. "I hear people coming..."

"Okay," said Joey. "It fits fine. It won't blow away. I tried a lot of them on to get one that would stay on."

"Oh, Joey!" exclaimed Jane. "You look great! Too bad you didn't wear your long-pants suit. They'd'a stood you up beside the First Selectman and the judge and the other important people..."

Joey looked around. None of these famous people had arrived yet.

Jane and Rufus looked up at Joey sitting there on top of his pile, and he tipped his hat to them and made a funny face. Then he tipped his hat to the curious gulls, but he hung on to it. No matter how tightly it fitted his head, he didn't want a stronger breeze, a gull, or some mean guy to snatch it away.

Rufus and Jane laughed at his funny faces. "When will you throw your hat in?" asked Jane.

"Be the first?" asked Rufus hopefully.

"Oh, no!" said Joey. "The First Selectman, John Jones, he'll be coming soon, and he'll be first. Next other important people. After that anybody throws."

They looked around. Their pier was beginning to fill up. So were the others up and down the sound, as well as the beaches and the big rock, Savin Rock.

"Where do you think your straw hat will land?" asked Jane.

Joey just laughed.

"On Long Island, maybe," said Rufus. "On top of one of those telegraph poles over there?"

"Or maybe," said Jane, "sail up and up and by tonight land on the man in the moon. Straw hat from Cranbury, Connecticut, Earth, Universe, lands on the head of the man in the moon!"

Joey just laughed.
He has a plan,
thought Jane.

Out in the water some little boats ... sailboats, rowboats, a few cabin launches and motorboats, even some canoes ... had moved in, and many had cast anchor out near the breakwater. From there they would have a wonderful view of the casting away of the straw hats of the Cranbury men. Perhaps some had cameras or binoculars!

There was a buoy in the middle of the bay between the piers and the breakwater, and it was, as always, clanging its doleful
ding-dong, ding-dong
as it bobbed this way and that in the waves.

"Doesn't he look funny, that buoy?" asked Jane.

"Like he's watching the goings-on," said Joey. He took his hat off now and held it tightly in his two hands.

More and more people began to arrive, crowding onto the pier. Laughing, sauntering, strolling, making up funny stories or limericks about their hats soon to be strewn over the sea, they took up positions in the best possible places.

Even Mr. Buckle came, leaning on his cane with one hand and with the other on Miss Nellie Buckle, his daughter, who guided him to the post opposite Joey's. Mr. Buckle did not have a straw hat on. Winter and summer he always wore his Civil War cap.

The band struck up. People shouted, "Hurrah!" as the disgruntled gull flew off and settled on the prow of a boat nearby. Then the First Selectman, Mr. John Jones, arrived, and escorted by a man with a megaphone, he made his way through the crowd, bowing to right and to left and tipping his straw hat, the last time it would ever be tipped. When he threw his hat out over the deep blue sea, then it was everybody's chance.

He and the man with the megaphone finally made their way to the place that had been reserved for them, in the middle of the end of the pier. Turning his back to the sea and facing the people, Mr. Jones got ready to say a few words suitable for this special occasion.

But people were still arriving. Judge Bell with his wife and their three little girls came along the pier. Judge Bell had on his usual straw hat, which he had no intention of casting into Long Island Sound.

His three little girls sat down on clean little linen towels Mrs. Bell had brought for this occasion. They squeezed in next to Rufus and Jane. They had on pretty organdy dresses and wore the whitest white stockings Jane had ever seen. She tucked her bare legs under the edge of the pier so the contrast would not be so dramatic.

"I see me in the water!" said Noonie. But that was all that was said, for now the man with the megaphone raised it to his mouth and boomed forth:

"Citizens of Cranbury! Welcome to our annual Straw Hat Day! I have the honor to present the First Selectman of our town, Mr. John Jones, who will say a few words."

Mr. Jones took the megaphone. He tried to say something, but had to wait for the prolonged cheers to end. Many men who had waited long enough and who had been twirling their hats around and around like pitchers warming up for the throw with three men on base shouted, "Hear! Hear!"

Finally, the First Selectman was able to begin. Megaphone in one hand, straw hat in the other, the symbol of this funny, special day, he spoke.

"Welcome, all you hat-throwers with your lovely ladies. Little children, welcome! Be careful not to fall off the pier. There are no railings. Stick close to your mothers. We want hats, not children, to go flying out o'er the great blue sea!"

The First Selectman was quite famous for his limericks, and he had created one for today. Last year's one had been printed in the
Cranbury Chronicle
and, framed, hung in the hallway of the Town Hall. Maybe this one would, too. The new one went like this:

Straw Hat Day,
Oh, Straw Hat Day!
Come ye who may
With straw hats, I say,
To cast away
In our Savin Rock Bay!

Then he wound his hat around and around and finally said, "Farewell, my friend in good weather or foul, this is the end!
Ave atque vale
!" And with a mighty swing, he flung his hat over the sea!

King Gull snatched it in his beak, and at this astonishing sight, a pause in the great mass of flying hats occurred. At this tense moment, Joey stood up on his post ... people may have thought this had been a rehearsal ... wound and wound and wound his hat, and then aiming as straight as

an arrow, he flung it high above the sea. Up into the air it went, and it was twirling and spinning around and around as the breeze carried it toward the buoy that was bobbing as usual between the pier and the breakwater.

"He's aimin' for the buoy!" said Jane excitedly to Rufus, and the word went from mouth to mouth, and men, about to throw their hats in, waited to hear. Had it or hadn't it reached its mark?

It had! It had! Joey Moffat's straw hat had landed on the buoy! So now the buoy, still wailing its mourning, warning singsong tune, had on a straw hat! It bobbled this way and that and seemed to be tipping its hat to the people in boats as they came nearby to take a snapshot or just to look.