Denis Lehane: Hats off to Indiana Jones' auction

The hat belonging to the famous adventurer must be as old as my kettle, and everything else on this farm.

Times must be tough for poor old Indiana Jones. He's about to sell his hat in an auction room in America.

It is believed the hat will sell for a fortune, but I'm not so sure.

The hat belonging to the famous adventurer must be as old as my kettle, and everything else on this farm.

I saw the hat on his head in countless action films down through the years, and he was running from one calamity to another.

Wherever disaster was unfolding, Indiana Jones always seemed to be in the thick of it — and always with that old hat on his head.

He was wearing it when being chased by wild men and animals in a jungle someplace, and it was also there when the Nazis were beating a path to his door.

I dare say he wore it from dawn 'til dusk, and perhaps whilst asleep too. And he was entitled to wear it too, for that is why hats exist in the first place.

I have no problem with a man wearing a hat, my issue is with his plans for disposing of it.

His hat must be a right flea-bitten rag at this stage, like something an old greyhound has been lying on with the past 20 years.

And it has been lined up for an auction as if it was a champion bullock, as if it were something we might cherish! His old hat?! Has the world gone crazy?

Most pawn shops, I suspect, would be slow to accept that hat.

The auction houses of Manhattan and elsewhere must be badly stuck for merchandise, if they have been reduced to selling cast-offs.

Sure, I have an old trousers out the back. I wonder would they sell that too? Or how about my undergarments? In the name of god, we could make a fortune!

In a crazy world, where one man's garbage can become another man's prized possession, there will probably be great pomp and ceremony when the hat finally arrives in the sales ring.

I wouldn't wear that hat if I was paid to do so, never mind fork out money for the privilege.

At the National Ploughing Championships a number of years ago, I purchased a hat similar to the one worn by Indiana Jones.

T'was a fine hat and there's no doubt about that. It was a hat that you could wear to a wedding and it cost me €30.

Big money at the time, but I felt it would be worth it for with the winter closing in. I needed to mind my head.

And while I may not have taken it to the jungles of Borneo or the slopes of the Himalayas, it has seen its own share of action around the highways and byways of Kilmichael.

And do you think I would take it now to an auction house in the US and pawn it off? Of course, I wouldn't. I purchased my hat for my head.

And the last time I checked, I still had one on my shoulders.

So what, I wonder, will Indiana Jones do now? What will he do without his hat? Will he chance a new adventure? like a hurler without his headgear?

I guarantee you that when the going gets tough, and it will, the first thing he will reach for will be his hat

And there it will be, gone! For he will have sold the blasted thing. And a greater fool, there never was.

He will be then seen fleeing some disaster zone, his head bare to the world. He'll be coughing and sneezing like a bullock badly in need of a dose. No use complaining then, it will be too late.

Like a well shorn old ram in the rain, he will be the perished old devil.

The title of the next movie could well be Indiana Jones and His Running Nose.

A man of his age should be holding onto his head gear and not casting it aside like yesterday's newspaper.

Mr Jones might be a smart man in many ways, but when he comes to selling his hat, I wonder is he using his head?