Johnny, I Want You To Have That Hat

In 1921, sixteen-year-old David Hanna cycled a hundred miles from Belfast to Donegal Town for a tailoring job at McDaid’s. The owner died a year later with no heir, so at nineteen David took over. Hanna Hats was born in 1924.

Forty years of bespoke suits, then a local man asked for a hat. David made a short-brimmed trilby from Donegal tweed in four and a half hours and called it number eighty-four, after the shop’s phone number. Spares went in the window so the cloth wouldn’t go to waste. An American with ties to L.L. Bean bought them, and that connection opened the American market.

His sons joined in the sixties. John took over in the eighties, renamed it Hanna Hats of Donegal, and passed in May 2019. Today his grandchildren Eleanor and John Patrick run the same workshop on Tirconaill Street with the same scissors. At their peak the workshop was turning out over two thousand caps a week for the US alone, boosted by Peaky Blinders and a wall of fame that includes Patrick Dempsey.

Eleanor says many hats get passed down through families. That’s not marketing. That’s the product. 

In 2013, Terry Kast filmed John showing his little hat museum. One cap from 1967, made for a young man starting at a bank, a fisherman. The brim warped from fifty years of wear. Before he died, the customer came in and said, “Johnny, I want you to have that hat.” When the man passed, John returned it to his wife. It sat on the coffin. She gave it back the next day.

Sit with that for a moment. A man wears a hat for fifty years. Because it fits his head, his weather, his life. The wool cloth of which it’s made  remembers his hands. The brim remembers the rain. When he dies, his family doesn’t reach for a photograph. They reach for the hat. Because the hat is him — the shape of his head still in it, the years still in it. And then they give it back to the man who made it, because they understand something most people have forgotten: an object made with care doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the story.

You don’t put a fifty-year-old baseball cap on a coffin. You put a Hanna hat there because it was the man, and the man was still in it.

A hat like this isn’t an accessory. It’s a record. Of where you’ve been, what you’ve done, who you are when nobody’s watching. A man wears it to fish, to stand in a field at dusk, to walk into the woods alone. It takes the shape of his life the way a river takes the shape of its bed. It only happens one day at a time, over decades, with a hat that refuses to quit.

Someone wears this because they’ve decided some things deserve to last. They’ve felt the difference between scissors and a machine, and it matters more than convenience. They’re not going back in time. They’re carrying something forward the present keeps dropping.

Their grandfather might have worn one. Their father didn’t. The hat says that world isn’t gone.

If you’ve ever held something your father held, you know. The things we keep are the things that keep us.

Stay safe, Bob 

This article was researched and written using modern research techniques.

Sources

• Hanna Hats of Donegal — official heritage page: https://hannahats.com/pages/heritage
• Irish Central — “How a bike ride led to the 100 year legacy of Hanna Hats”: https://www.irishcentral.com/irish-shopping/buy-irish/legacy-hanna-hats
• Business Post — “Hanna Hats of Donegal plots European and Asian expansion”: https://www.businesspost.ie/companies/hanna-hats-of-donegal-plots-european-and-asian-expansion/
• Terry Kast — “John Hanna on first and last caps” (April 2013): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBD
• Donegal Daily — “Business booms as Donegal company tips its hats to Peaky Blinders”: https://www.donegaldaily.com/news/business-booms-as-donegal-company-tips-its-hats-to-peaky-blinders-337665
• The Irish Times — “The Irish hats loved by Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Britney Spears”: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/Fashion/the-irish-hats-loved-by-brad-pitt-matt-damon-and-britney-spears-1.4791906
• Donegal Daily — “Hats off to Hanna as Donegal brand lands US Today Show slot”: https://www.donegaldaily.com/news/hats-off-to-hanna-as-donegal-brand-lands-us-today-show-slot-654375
• Donegal Live — “We’ll miss you so much — Hanna Hats wish Tony Gallagher the best after 46 years”: https://www.donegallive.ie/news/business/1971612/we-ll-miss-you-so-much-hanna-hats-wish-tony-gallagher-the-best-after-46-years.html
• Ireland’s Eye Magazine — “Hanna Hats: A tradition dating back to 1924”: https://irelandseye.ie/hanna-hats

History Around Us: Pawling’s Tavern – Ground Zero of the Black Boys Rebellion

On March 5, 1765, a single moment at a remote frontier tavern set off nine months of armed resistance against British authority — a full decade before the American Revolution.

Henry Pawling Sr. and the Tavern

Henry Pawling Sr. arrived in Antrim Township in the early 1740s. He purchased land and built a log home that he opened as a tavern at the northeast corner of today’s Williamsport Pike and Milnor Road, south of Greencastle. The tavern became a vital stop for pack trains heading west and earned a reputation as the last safe haven on the frontier.

Henry Pawling Sr. married Mary Hicks. They had a son, Henry Pawling Jr., and a daughter, Eleanor. He died in 1761. His son, Henry Pawling Jr., took over the tavern, replaced the log building with a stone structure, and continued operating it for many years. Henry Jr. died in 1794.

Henry Pawling Sr. is buried in Brown’s Mill Cemetery (also known as Brown’s Mill Presbyterian Cemetery) in Antrim Township. His grave is the oldest marked burial in the cemetery, located near the historic Brown’s Mill School close to the intersection of Brown’s Mill Road and Angle Road.

The Spark of Rebellion

On March 5, 1765, George Croghan’s large pack train carrying rum, gunpowder, tomahawks, and scalping knives stopped at Pawling’s Tavern. While the goods were being transferred from wagons to 81 pack horses, a package broke open, spilling what appeared to be scalping knives. This incident outraged local settlers still recovering from Pontiac’s War and directly triggered the Black Boys Rebellion.

The very next day, James Smith and his men attacked the train at Sideling Hill. The events that began at Pawling’s Tavern eventually led to multiple confrontations and the siege of Fort Loudoun.

Today, almost nothing remains of the original tavern — just a few foundation stones near the intersection of Williamsport Pike and Milnor Road. Yet its role as the flashpoint of one of the earliest acts of armed colonial resistance makes it historically significant.

Research assisted by historical archives and period accounts.

Stay safe, Bob.

Enough

​ I quietly stepped away from religion years ago. It’s not something I say with anger or bitterness — it simply stopped answering the questions I was carrying.

There’s a line from the movie No Country for Old Men that has always stayed with me. Anton Chigurh asks, “If the rules you followed brought you to this, of what use are the rules?” That question cuts deep, especially when I’ve sat with people who held their faith tightly, only to become afraid when death drew near.

I no longer believe in gods or an afterlife in the traditional sense. Yet I still have feelings I can’t fully explain. I’ve had strong moments where I feel the love of my life and I have known each other before. Our connection is so effortless and natural that I honestly believe we shared a previous life together. I don’t claim to understand how any of this works. It’s just a feeling.

There’s also a story about Kahlil Gibran that has always moved me. A young boy once saw an old man sitting alone, staring at the sunrise. When the boy asked what he was doing, the old man replied, “I am looking at life.” The boy asked, “Is that all?” The old man simply answered, “Isn’t that enough?”

That question lands differently the older I get.

The Tao Te Ching speaks to this same spirit:

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

I know I don’t see the world the same way most people around me do. I’ve learned to live with that quiet loneliness. Even so, I remain deeply thankful to be here, even if only for this brief time.

For me… that is enough.

Mercy

​Over the years I have sat with many kinds of death — grandparents, friends, and animals I cared for deeply.

The contrast between the two has stayed with me. Every living thing, whether animal or human, seems to want to see the sun rise one more time. That desire feels universal. And yet, when an animal is suffering, we consider it compassionate to help it pass peacefully. We often deny that same mercy to humans, even when they are in great pain.

There does have to be an end for all of us. This realization eventually led me to step away from the faith I was raised in.

The Grandfathers

Some of the strongest feelings come to me when I am alone in the woods.

In those quiet places, I sometimes feel the presence of the grandfathers — the ancestors. Not as beings who can help me or speak to me, but simply as a quiet presence. I know this feeling comes from inside my own mind, yet it still feels important to acknowledge them.

Stories from Tom Brown Jr.’s books often come to mind in these moments. When his teacher, Grandfather, wanted the young boy to learn patience and awareness, he would simply say, “Go feed the birds.”

Another time, after the boy had killed his first deer, he was overcome with disgust at what he had done. Grandfather looked at him and said, “Grandson, when you can feel the same way about breaking a blade of grass as you do about that deer, then you will understand.”

I burn sage and speak to the ancestors and grandfathers, not because I believe they can hear me, but because it feels right to show respect for those who walked here long before me. I don’t care for labels. What I feel doesn’t need a name. It simply is.

The Edge

There are certain moments when something inside me shifts.

I cannot force these moments. They come quietly — in certain places or with certain thoughts — and suddenly I find myself at the very edge of what my mind can hold. It feels like standing just on the fringe of seeing something much larger, something just beyond my reach.

This feeling reminds me of Michael Harner’s experience in his book The Way of the Shaman. During an ayahuasca ceremony, he was shown visions that he was told were reserved for the dead and the dying. My own experiences are much gentler and sober, but I understand the feeling of touching a boundary most people never approach.

These experiences eventually brought me to one of the most consistent feelings I have — a quiet presence in the woods.