Head Games

And this, unlike the previous post, is not about pipes. 

Oh, OK—it is about the last two mentions of pipes for this blog.

But that’s it—fertig.

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But that’s not it for hats.

After writing the previous post, “Up In Smoke” (https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2021/10/up-in-smoke.html), it occurred to me that there were two groups of present day American males who are never seen without a lid on. One group are the Hasidic Jews. Now what we can say about them is that they have a very good reason to sport their headgear: As the old Hebrew National hot dog commercial went, they have to answer to a higher authority. So one understands the masses of hats one sees on Hasidic occasions. 

Though one wonders if the Higher Authority demands black hats and wouldn’t prefer a fedora or Panama mixed in for variety’s sake.   

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The second group of present-day American hat wearers I found it hard to give a name to. They may be seen singularly or in groups. Here is a group photo:

And here is a solitary wearer:

But the thing that all these ten-gallon fakers have in common is that they don’t take off their hats when they’re indoors. Every now and again when a president feels the need to include one of these mad hatters in a White House photoshoot, the shmuck doesn’t have the courtesy to doff his lid even in that august venue.

That’s it! That’s the word that defines the group—shmucks.

Here’s the wonderful Saul Steinberg depiction of them:

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Back in the days when I was a regular rider of the New York City subway system, I was standing in a car in which a Hasid was sitting catty-corner with a young Black woman and her son, who was about five years old. The child, viewing the man’s black hat, turned to his mother and asked, “Is that man a cowboy?”

Sorry, son, Hopalong Horowitz he wasn’t.