E is for Easter

I am from the end of an era.

Watch a movie from pre-World War II through the 1950s, and you will see women wearing hats and gloves when they went out. On I Love Lucy, the women all wore hats and gloves for such simple activities as to play bridge at one another's homes. And they looked so glamorous!

But in the 1960s, not long after Jackie Kennedy left the White House and her little pill box hats behind her, the rest of American women began abandoning hats as well. 

Just a little too late for me.

One of the last vestiges of the hat era was Easter Sunday. No little girl was dressed for church that day without a frilly dress, white gloves, and a hat.

It was Easter Sunday 1963, and I was dressed in my Easter best. I was two years old and still vividly remember the scratchy petticoat I was wearing under my dress that day while posing next to my brother on our back patio. I remember the ruffled socks. The shiny shoes with the slippery soles.

But the worst thing was the hat. 

The hat that squeezed my head, pinching me above my ears, the elastic band under my chin biting into my skin.

I hate, hate, HAAAATED that hat.

It isn't obvious, is it?