Never Came Back
Phillip Pratt

my father wore a hat to work, a dark brown felt fedora. I saw a picture of my grandfather, my father’s father, wearing a felt fedora. I never met my great-grandfather, but I am sure he wore a fedora as well. they all did. my father’s grandfather, abandoned his family to look for work and vanished. my father’s father was orphaned with his older sister when their mother died. my father’s father was adopted and given a last name. his sister was not. she was hired domestic help. when my father’s father became a father wearing his own felt fedora, he loaded his family – my father, his younger sister and brother with their mother—in a car and left Ohio for California to look for work. there my father’s father left his family, my father and his siblings and my grandmother, to look for work and maybe hold a job. he never came back either.