I don’t know where my father’s fez has gone. I know I last saw it sitting on the head of Arnold Zweibach. Arnold always looked a little stuffy, self-important and mildly ridiculous while wearing it and I simply forgot to take it off his head when my puppets ran off with another fellow.

My father did not wear his fez except once when he posed for me with it on.  He was a “Doakey” which in the parlance of the Knights of Pythias meant a fully vetted regular member. The Knights of Pythias wore fez’s when they met together to demonstrate their brotherhood very much like the Knights of Columbus, the Masons and especially the Shriners who parade each year out in Philadelphia.  These worthies all clustered around the paraphernalia of secret societies peculiar to their own particular brand. They met in “Halls” where the factotum opened the case where the banner and sacred objects and symbols were kept until meeting time.  Then it all was trotted out and the gentlemen (do ladies do this too?) put on their regalia and (in my father’s case I only knew of his headgear) and performed mystical and very important rites.

My father had this fez from the time I would guess when he and my mother operated a grocery on High Street in Newark.  The grocery was a block away from the YMH and YWH-A.  This was a center of Jewish cultural life including two imposing “Temples” on High Street with one for Conservatives and one for Reform so I would further surmise that he found the Knights of Pythias sprouting from one of these three centers of communal life in that part of town.

I have no memories of the rituals, books or any other artifact except that fez and of my father’s involvement with it.  I think he took it seriously but he never mentioned anything other than he had that fez and it was representative of this solemn organization.

It came to me by way of some of his possessions after he died in 1949 at the age of 65.  I have often remarked that I have passed his mark although I have to go another ten years to best my mother.  I sort of liked that fez and had absolutely no use for it until I thought of the perfect place to keep AND use it.

Now, Arnold Zweibach was one of six half-sized (from the waist up) human manikins I constructed for my puppet theater.  He generally played the part of a nerdy schoolteacher and I had a lot of fun poking fun at his stiff and square ways.  His counterpart was Melba Toaste, a with-it guidance counselor and there was Uneeda Bisquet and Biff Stew, two students in Hardtack Junior High School.  Well, that is another story.  Arnold cut quite the figure of a professional man with his fez, my father’s fraternal order’s distinguishing and distinguished headdress.