This week's Sepia Saturday theme involves hats, so I offer here a selection of hats that my grandfather Bentley wore. Most of these photos I've previously posted in their full state, and have cropped them a bit for this post...
Here is George, center, in a youthful flat cap. The year is most likely in the 'Teens. He's standing in front of the Bentley Bros. general store and gas station, with his brother Clyde to his left and an assistant on his right, both of whose hats look peculiarly Russian. There appears to be snow on the ground and roof, so you can hardly blame them.
Here are the brothers more formally posed (Clyde again to George's left) with their more summery straw boaters.
George continued wearing a boater well into his middle age. Here he stiffly stands, all gussied up with his wife Jessie beside their house in Elm, Michigan.
But he also had a fedora, similarly pale. That's my father Nelson and his sister Margaret, circa 1930.
Here's George a few years earlier in what I daresay is a Homburg, brim conservatively curled. That's an interesting style of jacket my father is wearing along with his newsboy cap.
(George's father also favored fedoras, even while gardening. That's Nelson in the fetching sun dress and, er, Easter bonnet?
George also reverted to flat caps on occasion. Here he is in about 1919 with baby Nelson and his older sister Dorothy.
