Hat Rings
By Eleazar Goodenough

Grandpa Spellbinder has a neat trunk in his attic, filled with all sorts of magic props that he has collected during his long life. When I was younger and when he could still climb up the steps to the attic, we would sometimes visit his old magic trunk and he would show me all sorts of wonderful things that it contained. I guess that old trunk really started my interest in magic.

Now that he is confined to a wheelchair and can no longer climb up the stairs with me, we have a new game. I go up to the attic alone and find something that intrigues me in the trunk, and then I bring it downstairs so he can show me what I found.

At first I thought I had found a mouse’s nest inside the trunk. It was fuzzy, and when I touched it, I jumped. I turned the flashlight on it, thinking I would see something alive and crawling, but instead it was just this old fuzzy piece of black felt cloth. I pulled it out to see what was under it or inside it that might make an interesting magic trick to explore, but it was just a floppy black ring of felt. So I tossed it back into the trunk and found something more interesting and took it down stairs to Grandpa Spellbinder.

When I told him the story of how I had been frightened by that old piece of cloth, he laughed and told me to run back up to the attic and get it, and while I was at it, to put back the prop I had brought down for another day. That old black cloth ring, he assured me, was far more interesting than I could ever imagine.

He was right. Today, I don’t even remember the other prop I wanted him to show me. Instead I became fascinated by my introduction to the Art of Chapeaugraphy, or as I called it then and still call it to this day, “Hat Rings.”

Grandpa Spellbinder put that old Hat Ring through its paces and had me in stitches as he transformed it into one silly hat after another. He ran through as many as he could remember from his old act, but then he began to forget, so he invited me to challenge him to make a hat, any hat.

Thinking of the paper hat tears I had made for my book “Tear-Able Magic,” I challenged him to make a Santa Hat. He made a hat like one of the ones he had made earlier, only then he had called it a “witch hat.” I complained that it was just a black pointed hat like a wizard or witch would wear, and went skipping off to my room for some red foam material. I cut out my own ring from the red foam and went back in to him wearing my red Santa Hat creation.

Grandpa Spellbinder sighed and handed me a fresh blank notebook from his desk. “Keep going,” he said. “This is the start of your new book. The Art of Chapeaugraphy has always been like a black and white movie. Your job is to turn it into Technicolor and take it places it has never been before.”

So that’s what this Hat Rings book is all about. New colors, new characters, and new uses for old Hat Rings. And while I’m at it, I won’t always use a ring form to make some of my new hats. And while I’m at it, I’ll add some magic tricks you can do with the hats you create. And while I’m at it, I’ll add some modern day technologies they didn’t have when the Art of Chapeaugraphy was strictly a black and white thing. I hope you enjoy the journey!

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