Gents, ladies, lads, lassies, rabble and rabblettes:

There was/is a thread about hats, with particularity, the Glengarry and what level of dress should be appropriate when wearing one. This thread is not about that.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=26145

I wanted to comment, but it was in answer to a deviating thread (almost as bad as a dangling participle, I suppose), and Mike1 had already indicated that he looked with favor on posts which were on-topic.

Hats and I

I like hats. Not all of them, mind you, but enough of them that I can feel safe in saying I like them. I do, of course, have certain prejudices and preferences when it comes to hats. I like hats which are either pretty or utilitarian and preferably both.

What do I like in hats, in terms of utility. Although many of the men in my family are cueballs, I'm not. My sister maintains a grudge against me TO THIS DAY because I have thick hair, thick curly eyelashes and bushy eyebrows. (The eyebrows are not quite Brezhnevian, but threaten to grow more so with the passage of time.) So I don't really need a hat to prevent scalp-burn.

I do need/desire/want/seek a hat that will shade my eyes, and work as a sweatband. Baseball/gimme caps are the cheapest and most common solution, but I simply can't stand them. My head size and shape simply make me look silly in a baseball cap. I did like the utility cover I wore in the Corps, but it was larger at the top than on the sides and it was cloth and had a goodly brim.

I think ideally I'd like a driving/Irish cap with a longer brim, but my hat preferences are only incidental to this post. I mostly wanted to talk about hat courtesy, as understood by me.

A gentleman (of however low or high a birth) does not wear his hat indoors, unless under arms. "Under arms" being a term of art to include "having the duty" or participating in a color guard, or otherwise acting in an official capacity.

The coach of the Houston Oilers in days gone by was named Bum Phillips. He would always be seen in his cowboy hat, except indoors. He would not wear his hat inside the Astrodome: that was indoors enough for him.

A gentleman doffs, or at least tips, his hat to a lady. It is presumed that all female human beings are ladies. A gentleman need not doff nor tip his hat to a man. I am enough of an egalitarian that I have never cared much for caste systems, and the old image of the man 'umbly addressing his betters with cap clutched in hands, held before him, never did much for my temper.

One of the most disturbing events in my life involved this issue. I was driving out to South Carolina to Parris Island to retrieve the lady who was, at that time, my wife, and stopped to ask for directions in Alabama. I asked an older black gentleman, pulled up next to him and said, "Excuse me, sir, I've gotten turned around, might I trouble you for directions back to the highway?" This gentleman took his hat off before he spoke to me, and held it in his hands before him. I was, almost literally, in shock, and remember it to this day, some fifteen years later.

I do not pretend that these are iron, universal laws. They are the way I was taught things should be, and they are the way I comport myself in regard to headgear. I do not expect people from other cultures to know and understand these mores. I would not, for instance, expect a Sikh to remove his turban indoors.

I am a product of my time and place. I was born and bred in Texas, born in the late 1960s to a family of mixed-breed Celts from small Texas towns by way of Tennessee. My opinions are different from my father's, as his were different from his father's---same blood, same places, just different times.

I do not regard doffing or tipping of the hat to indicate submission, merely respect. I call male humans "sir" and female humans "ma'am" until I know them well enough to be informal, and address them as "Mr. (or Mrs.) Smith" until I am comfortable enough with them to refer to them by their given or Christian name. That, for me, is neither submission nor subservience, but simply good manners.

Off topic as all get out, but the thread linked above got me to thinking, and you know how dangerous that can be!