When I was in middle school, they took us on a tour of a hat factory.  I think that I had not even known that such things existed. Hats are not as popular now as they were back in the forties or fifties, but this place still made those old-fashioned men’s hats: fedoras or trilbies, maybe even Stetsons.

It had been important once, this hat factory. It had stood near the center of town and had been the town’s second most important industry, after farming. The town had grown, and the area where the factory sat was now mostly abandoned and literally on the wrong side of the rusty railroad tracks that led away from a past that was never coming back.

But it was still part of our history, and so the teachers shepherded us into a big yellow school bus, streaked with rain, and sat us down on the hard green vinyl covered seats, where we had to sit too close to kids that we didn’t like or that we liked too much.

We jostled our way past the wet cornfields and onto a street of boarded-up buildings. The trip wasn’t even long enough to get to thirty seven bottles of beer on the wall, which we sang out of boredom but also, it seemed, out of a sense of obligation to tradition.

The bus pulled into a parking area which was really just an extension of the street. Mrs. Randall, shooing us along off the bus, tried to get everyone under a sad green awning in the front of the factory, but there were too many of us, and most of us were stuck in the rain.

We waited for a few minutes for someone to let us in. There was a hurried conversation between Miss Tenney and Mrs. Randall, resulting in Mrs. Randall rattling the door handle.

A man came out, looked startled, and went back in again. Then he came back out with another man. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me, but they were both wearing hats. They looked like extras from a black and white gangster movie.

“Come on in. Stay to the right, please,” the second man said, so we did.

The front entry way was fancy, to welcome visitors. The walls were made of some kind of dark wood, and there was actually a chandelier, although probably half of the bulbs were burned out. The teachers, at the direction of the tour guides, assembled us into a single file line. The second man pushed aside some heavy dusty curtains, and we walked through. 

We entered a large open area. The floor was concrete, and there were rows of fluorescent lights high above. 

Most of the place was cordoned off, not in use any more. There were stacks of boxes everywhere.

“Good morning. My name is Mr. Durkee,” the second man said. The first man had disappeared, presumably gone back to whatever he had been doing before. “This is the Northland hat company, and I will be your guide.”

He led us along the wall to an area with what looked like rows of desks. Women with black hair, old and young, stood at the desks. They applied glue to a ribbon, numbly smoothed it over a hat, and placed the hat in a pile. None of them looked up from their work. Once while we stood there, a man came by on a small tractor and loaded up the finished hats onto pallets. Another man on another tractor brought more hats to be finished.

While this was going on, Mr. Durkee hit his stride. He went on and on about when the company had been founded, how many hats they made, all the different countries that they sold them to, and many other very uninteresting facts. The kids were getting restless, just standing there. Greg and Kyle started pushing each other, just a little, and Mrs. Randall glared at them. The next time Mr. Durkee took a breath, she interrupted him.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Durkee. This has been so informative. The children need to be back in time for their next classes. We appreciate your time.” 

He looked surprised, then his shoulders took on a resigned posture. We turned around, back into the welcoming area. Miss Tenney counted everyone as we exited under the awning. The rain had ended and the clouds had dispersed. We blinked in the unexpected sunlight.