343 Caps : Devoted Collector Is Just a ‘Mad Hatter’

For Lindsey Upp, joy is a hat. Hats make him happy. He collects baseball-style caps like other people collect stamps, coins, guns, beer steins, pins, butterflies, jigsaw puzzles.

So far, he has gathered 343 hats from all over the country. They hang like cloudy trophies from the rafters of his pool room.

“He’s my Mad Hatter,” his wife, Iris, fondly told a visitor.

To start his collection, Upp, a forklift operator and bakery worker, thought it would be a good idea to get one hat from each of the 50 states.

Forty-four states have responded so far, and Iris Upp, who has been her husband’s chief booster and secretary since the hat-collecting mania struck him 19 months ago, is relentlessly wooing the holdouts with periodic letters from the couple’s Harbor Gateway home.

And she won’t stop until all of them have tossed their hats onto the Upp rafters.

On the ‘Snippy’ List

Nebraska was one of the problem states. Letters to the capital city of Lincoln went unanswered for months. Iris Upp put Nebraska on her list of states that should be sent “snippy” letters.

Then a new mayor, Bill Harris, took over in Lincoln. Right away, he dashed off a letter to the Upps, apologizing for the delay and promising to contribute a hat as soon as he can find one.

“He even returned the dollar bill,” said Upp, referring to the money he sends to cover postage costs. In fact, all of the governors, mayors and other officials who have answered Upp’s cheery request for a hat have refused to keep his dollar.

“We’re just proud to be included in your wonderful collection,” wrote Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut III. His letter, along with hundreds more from other contributors, are kept in Iris Upp’s project album. She also maintains a meticulous log that shows the source of each hat and the date received.

Lindsey Upp is saving hat space for the six missing states--Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio, Mississippi and Rhode Island. Meanwhile, he’s filling the rafters with contributions from beer and soft drink makers, manufacturers, ball clubs, truckers, U.S. Navy ships and submarines--anybody who puts out a hat.

“We have a new policy around here,” Iris Upp said. “If somebody wants to do business with us, like fixing the shingles or selling us lawn fertilizer, they have to come up with a hat.”

Another great source may be the nation’s media. Several newspapers have added their hats to the collection, and Iris Upp has a list of television stations from all over the country, and she is writing letters to every one of them.

What is this thing Lindsey Upp has about hats?

“It’s funny, but I never really paid much attention to hats until I got into collecting,” said Upp, a Chicago native who worked for 18 years at the Armco steel plant in Torrance until it closed in 1985.

What turns Upp on about hats, he said, is the same feeling that seizes serious collectors of any other object. “It’s the challenge,” he said. “I could go into a store and buy hats, but that wouldn’t be collecting. I like to go after the hats that are hard to get.”

“It’s attaining the unattainable,” suggested Iris Upp, whose passion for years has been her Elvis Presley collection. The couple’s home is filled with memorabilia of the singer, including a rose from his grave, and every year Iris Upp joins other faithful fans at the Presley shrine in Memphis.

Lindsey Upp, 48, acknowledged that his still-modest hat collection can’t compare with his wife’s awesome assortment of Elvis trophies. “But you’re just beginning, honey,” Iris Upp said. “In another two years, you could have 2,000 hats, and I’ll help you. You could get in the Guinness Book of Records. We’ll start a hat organization and call it the California Chapeau Club.”

Upp nodded, the vision shining in his eyes. “Bless his heart,” Iris Upp said to the visitor. “He’s such a wonderful man. I love him more than Elvis. My children love him, my whole family adores him. Such a good man.”