He’s Not Just Talking Through His Hat

Did you ever have a space helmet as a kid? One you could put on and suddenly become invincible, impervious to the forces aligned against you?

Meet Walt Netschert. Although well into his 60s, he has a spacey helmet he dons when beset by foes. But unlike kids and their imaginary villains, Netschert--aided by a sense of humor--is dead serious about feeling oppressed by very real villains.

They are FAFs, the people he calls Fresh Air Freaks. He calls his helmet the E-7 Equalizer Ecology Hat, and, like all good superheroes, has a name for himself as well: Capt. Huff-and-Puff. He derives his powers from cigarettes.

Netschert smokes, and has since he was an engineering student in college.

“I didn’t start to look smart or be part of a group,” he explained. “In my junior year, the dean of engineering called me in and said, ‘The instructors have all been talking about you because you’re puzzling to us. Your class participation is fine; your homework, reports and lab stuff are super-good, but you get a test and you struggle to get a C-minus. Why?’

“I told him, ‘My head goes faster than my hand.’ I’d work a problem through, but my hand wouldn’t keep up, and I’d have to start over, and it made me nervous. He said, ‘Well, your head has to have patience for your hand to catch up. Try either a glass of wine or a cigarette before a test.’ It made all the difference in the world.”

Had Netschert, who lives in Orange, chosen differently, he might now be trying to market the Ecology Wine Hat. But cigarettes it was.

“I find them highly beneficial to my way of performing,” he said. “With tobacco I can settle my nerves down and think methodically and in order, and without it . . . 15 minutes is OK, but then my thoughts lose focus on what’s going on.”

In recent years he found that onetime clients wouldn’t hire him if he smoked at their facilities. Favorite restaurants would no longer seat him. He can’t even light up at an Angel game anymore.

So the engineer turned inventor and made his special hat. A clear plastic shield forms an isolation zone in front of the smoker’s face, complete with ashtray and a clip that will hold either a cigarette or a cigar. As long as the smoker keeps his lit cigarette in that zone, and is careful to exhale upward, Netschert claims the smoke won’t be a problem to anyone else.

A fan pulls the smoke up and through two filters, and there’s even an optional perfumed scent packet. The fan is reversible, so the hat can conversely serve as an air filter for smoke- or pollen-sensitive persons. It runs on batteries, off a wall socket or a car cigarette lighter. Netschert refers to his invention as a “peace pipe for the ‘90s.”

Meeting a reporter at an Anaheim coffee shop, in the smoking section, he demonstrated his E-7 hat. It appeared to work. He contentedly puffed away on his long More cigarette behind his plastic shield, accompanied by the whine of the fan, and there was no outward-bound smoke or smell to speak of.

He designed the hat in 1989 while doing an in-house engineering project for Disney Imagineering. He had already found a way to smoke on the job by setting up his office in a custodian’s closet beneath a stairwell, but he was going nuts not being able to smoke at a four-hour weekly meeting. So he devised the hat and was then allowed to puff and whir away at the meetings.

So far the only Ecology hats extant are 10 prototypes, some of formed cardboard and a couple of plastic. He has been trying to interest investors and has charts predicting 250,000 sales of the projected $79.95 hat in its first year of manufacture. He thinks it’s a conservative estimate that one in 250 of the nation’s estimated 42 million smokers will buy one.

When he exhibited the hat at a 1989 invention exhibition, Netschert said a prominent Japanese inventor told him that he’d do well with his product in Japan. About the only American interest he has received, though, was an invitation to appear on “The Tonight Show,” which he did in November, 1989.

He has tried to interest domestic manufacturers to no avail, and his appeals to the tobacco industry have been similarly ignored.

He thinks that is because smokers are vocally outnumbered 4 to 1 in the United States, and because the tobacco industry is so busy racking up export sales that it has abandoned smokers in this country.

There may be yet another reason though, one right in front of him.

His hat may work wonderfully, saving smokers from being ostracized and saving others from the smoke, but it looks utterly ridiculous.

Even the generally gracious Johnny Carson told Netschert, “You look very silly. You know that, don’t you?”

He does know that, conceding that his hats are “uglier than sin.” But so, he argues, was the Volkswagen Bug, and people came to love it.

Netschert doesn’t encourage others to smoke and says he saw to it that his two sons didn’t smoke. But he does . He likes to, and feels he has to in order to function. And everywhere he turns he sees his preferred pleasure being denied--needlessly, he thinks.

So he blows smoke in his hat in places where smoking isn’t allowed, wearing the E-7 in restaurants, malls and even airplanes, without hearing complaints, he said.

His goal is to form Puffin’ Posses, where he, under the name Capt. Huff-and-Puff, and others will target certain no-smoking venues (not, he said, ones where smoking is a fire-code violation) by going there en masse and lighting up under his hats. If the venues refuse to let them smoke even if the hats filter all particulates and odors from the air, then Netschert will publicly dub them Fresh Air Freaks. He’s even sent invitations to smoking celebrities he hopes will join him under the E-7.

In his ideal world, if smokers were in the minority in a workplace, they’d wear the hats. If nonsmokers were the minority, they’d wear the hats, having reversed the fan so it would filter the smoky air. Peace would reign.

Does he worry that by removing some of the social stigma from smoking, he might encourage others to smoke?

“That’s not the intent at all. It’s just to support the rights of smokers. Don’t make them stand outside where they can’t do their work. Don’t let them get kicked out of a profession as I was, and others are.”

He has yet to develop any smoking-related illnesses and said that’s an individual risk. He discounts the risks of secondhand smoke.

“Good gosh, the Good Lord put those killer bones in fish too, and it’s up to the individual whether they want to eat fish. I know a guy who has ingested a couple of decent shots of cyanide and lived though it. I think our maker gave us a system that rejects reasonable amounts of impurities, and secondary smoke I think is a reasonable amount.”

He said he is particularly incensed with the cold shoulder his entreaties have gotten from the tobacco industry. He thought it would be in the industry’s best interest to see his product on the market and to advertise it, for a royalty, on their cigarette cartons. He said he may have to turn to Japan to get his product manufactured.

“It’s so politically charged here. Nonsmokers don’t want anything to interfere with their thinking that it’s bad, bad, bad. And they sure don’t want to approve of someone and their right to smoke. Then the tobacco industry is so content with the way they’re making bucks with their exports they won’t get embroiled in this domestic folderol. So two major block factions stand in the way in this country.”

In the meantime, Netschert soldiers on with his remaining Equalizer Ecology Hat prototypes--he sent one to a nephew with allergies and another to a woman he saw on Oprah whose smoking was an issue in her custody battle--hoping to win back his place at the table of American life.