The workshop opened onto the street in front, and an enclosed courtyard in back where hats could be spread out to dry in the sun, its equatorial intensity softened by a couple of palms and a jacaranda.

Below are some of the forms Nestor used to iron the hats. They are different sizes, different heights. Some are flat on top, others are round. Nestor had at least a hundred forms.

I once bought an entire tree of this light wood.

I wanted to have forms made for the weavers. Easier dicho than hecho. Just finding out what kind of wood to use was a challenge worthy of the CIA. Caco. Eventually, we were told by one of the hat dealers that the tree is called a caco tree. So we went out looking for caco wood.

Have you ever shopped for caco wood in Ecuador? It’s a lot like a North American snipe hunt. We tried lumberyards, furniture makers, wood workers, anyone we could think of and find. Finally, in our twenty-eighth try, and our third lumberyard, another customer overheard our request. After we were told, again, that there was no such tree or wood, the other customer caught my eye and signaled we should talk outside the lumberyard.

Tree intrigue. The life of a Panama hatter is weirder than you can possibly imagine. Well, this Panama hatter.

He gave us our first good lead: a name and a phone number.

Alicia (the interpreter from hell) called the number and asked about buying a caco tree. This was one of the times I was grateful to be able to hand the phone to someone else and plead poor Spanish skills. She arranged for us to meet with two strangers in a small town 30 kilometers from Montecristi. We were about to buy a caco tree.

Imagine you live in a very small town in rural Ecuador near the Pacific coast. You look up and here comes a gringo. I’m obvious. I don’t pass for local. (Come to think of it, I don’t pass for local anywhere.)

I approach, smiling, and tell you in fairly bad Spanish that I am looking for two men who are going to sell me a tree that I will use to make hats.

“Did you already give them the money for this tree?” was the usual response. (Translation: Just how stupid are you?)

We took a walking tour of the town, asking everyone who didn’t run away about Eduardo and Manuel and our caco tree. Chickens always ran. Children usually did not. Pigs were hard to predict. About the time the locals were thinking of calling a town meeting to decide what to do with us, Eduardo and Manuel showed up. It was a go. So we went.

We drove a short way out of town and pulled off the road. We hiked out into what looked like a pasture. They took me to a tree. They gestured at it enthusiastically and said that was my tree.

Yikes. My tree is still “on the hoof” or on the root. It’s a live tree with leaves. Oh no. This is like choosing a live turkey or lobster. It seems too personal. I imagined logs or something, not a live tree. I’m a dyed-in-the-cellulose tree hugger from way back.

Okay, I’ve cut my own Christmas trees on tree farms in California and in the woods in Kentucky where I grew up, so this is like that. I avoided giving the tree a name, like Woody or Jose.

Okay. My tree. My caco tree. I tried to feel proud.

It was a nice enough tree. Not a big tree. About twenty-five feet tall.

“This is the kind, is it?”

Si.

How was I supposed to know? Or test? Can’t exactly heft a rooted tree in my hand to see how dense the wood is. Uh…deal.

I marked the tree to show them which branches to use and how far up each to cut.

The entire time I was doing this tree purchase thing I was conscious that I was way off the grid. I didn’t know who these guys were. I didn’t know whose field it was. I didn’t know who actually owned the tree. I didn’t know if it was a caco tree. I didn’t know if $40 was a fair price for a caco tree. For all I knew, these two hustlers might have already sold this same tree four times that month. Oh, those crazy gringos.

It worked out fine. Eduardo and Manuel delivered as promised. Eventually, I actually delivered several dozen forms to weavers.

That year, Diego and Jorge delivered about seventy forms (hormas) to weavers. We bought up all the caco wood the maker of the hormas had on hand. Then we gave him money to buy more caco wood to make more hormas. The forms were provided to weavers at no cost.

Some years later I created “libraries” of hormas which included sizes from 52cm to 63cm, and three different heights – 10.3, 10.8, and 11.3. One “library” is for hats woven in Las Pampas and the other is for hats woven in Pile. I decide what grades, sizes, and heights I want the weavers to weave, then we loan them the right form to weave each hat. When the hats are woven, we pay for them, and loan a new form to weave the next hat.

Nestor would choose a form to fit the general shape the weaver had woven. He would want the hat to fit very snugly onto the form. Sometimes he might try several forms of different sizes before finding the right one.

Nestor Franco knew his stuff. He was a good apaleador, a great planchador. His family was famous for their ironing for several generations. None of Nestor’s children practices the family art. His brother did. Photos of Alvaro Franco are below.

When Nestor found the right form for the hat, he removed the hat from the form and put a half-inch-wide leather belt over the form. He tightened the belt on the form, without the hat. (right) He usually had to work to pull the tightened belt off the form.

Below left, he put the hat onto the form then put the tightened belt over the hat. He had pulled the belt as tight as he could before he tied it. By adding the thickness of the hat all around the form, the belt is tighter than ever.

That’s Alvaro standing beside Trent Johnson of Greeley Hatworks. right

I liked Alvaro. Not so much when he would come to my hotel at 6 a.m. to sell me hats. I liked him more in the afternoon, when I watched him iron hats. He caused the Alvaro Rule. I put out the word that I would not buy from any dealer who came to or called my hotel. Good rule. It worked. I always visited every dealer, oldest friends first.