Carry Me Back: Rummaging For a $6 Coat

Carry Me BACK

Rummaging For a $6 Coat

By Jimmy Hatcher

Back in the day, and maybe even now, there were always a number of rummage sales in Middleburg, a wonderful source for used riding clothes.

I had mostly been a show ring rider in my native area of Richmond but had become interested in fox hunting with the Piedmont Hunt because I was keeping my horse at Mrs. A.C. Randolph’s Salem stable near the village of Upperville.

Jimmy Hatcher looked like a million dollars in his $6 riding coat.

Sketch by Wally Nall

One year, Middleburg’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church was having a spring rummage sale and I walked in the door and immediately headed for the men’s clothing section. That’s where I spied a beautifully cut black hunting coat.

I was so excited, I quickly ripped the coat off the hanger, found it to be a perfect fit and happily paid the princely sum of $6 to take it home. Once there, after a closer look, the coat still had a dry-cleaning label that read “Mr. Mills return to Miss du Pont.” That Sunday, I was at a luncheon also was attended by James Mills and his family. I told him I had bought his old hunting coach at the church sale, but he replied that he had never even owned a hunting coat. He was a fine, eight-goal polo player, not a fox hunter.

At that point, I told him about the dry cleaning label in the coat I”d just purchased and he replied, “does the lining look like pajamas?” Yes, I said, it certainly did. “You have my father’s hunting coat,” he said. “I was courting Alice and she asked me to come to Aiken and bring my hunting kit, of which I had none. So I went into my parents’ attic and pulled out my father’s hunting coat, never even taking it out of the clothing bag to see its condition.

“Well,” he continued, “I got to Aiken, removed the coat from the bag, looked at its disreputable condition and sent it over to the Aiken cleaners. I

married Alice and I haven’t seen the coat since. I guess she must have sent it off to the church rummage sale.”

Needless to say that coat served me well. My friend, the late Middleburg artist Wally Nall even drew a sketch with me on my horse and wearing that wonderful coat. You never know what treasure you’ll find at a Middleburg church rummage sale.