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| LONGVIEW - It took 17 years and inquisitive friend for some unique Lobo caps to find the light of day again - just long enough to see the Longview High School football team leave for the state football championship game.
James "Walter" Parker and his wife used to own a gift shop on South High Street called Flowers, Gifts and Things. Parker's wife ordered several hundred specially made hats with fuzzy wolf heads on them for the shop and its Lobo patrons in 1980. But the hats were forgotten when Parker had heart problems that required a bypass surgery. His wife closed the gift shop, boxing up all its contents. Parker's friend Trena Waller, a clerk at the EZ Mart convenience store next door to Parker's barber shop, asked him what a lobo was during a conversion about the hopeful state football champions. "I'm from Gladewater so I didn't know what a lobo is," Waller said. "When he said it was a wolf, I didn't believe him." Parker came up with proof for his doubting friend - a box of more than two dozen fuzzy wolf hats. "He said, 'If I show you, you have to wear it all day,'" Waller said. "And I did." The clerk and her co-workers wore the hats when they waved tot eh LHS team bus as it drove by Friday morning on its way to the Astrodome. The EZ Mart, 1301 S. High St., is selling the hats for $10 each, the price Parker paid for them in 1980. "We're trying to get some of his money back for him," Waller said. "One woman came in here and bought six. She called back later and asked for three more." "We've had fun with them," Parker said. "I just should've thought about it a couple weeks ago." |