What's on your Christmas list?

[Howard]

Originally Posted by koosie

Well I got what I've wanted for ages for birthday/christmas. This rather fantastic hat :

http://s127.photobucket.com/albums/p...nt=goodhat.jpg

It's a total fraud of course, a creation of acrylic and polyester but I don't care. It's my new no.1 hat. I have many hats but this one really suits the current freezing weather.

The funny part is - I do have areal one (it is in one of my boxes in storage somewhere). I got it from a Russian sailor on the 1986 Med deployment. I collected sailor and military hats on that deployment. A Mod Kashin destroyer (our code for a particular Russian model destroyer at the time), pulled into what was then (Ree-yay-ka), Yugoslavia (I do not know the spelling but the pronounciation). They were on the pier farthest from us, and they stayed for only two days. I snuck a carton of Marlboros and a Zippo lighter to one of the sailors and he hooked me up with one of those ermine hats (with the red star). In those days it was illegal to meet with one another, but that is not how we felt.