Frederick the Great said a crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in. I never paid much attention to hats until I started losing the hair on my head. They say that most of the heat in winter escapes the body through the head, and I have found that is true as I got balder and balder; I needed a hat.
At first, I wore baseball caps, but even I was not too fond of how they looked. I wore strat hats, red hats, and wool caps, but I always pined a bit for one of those newsboy caps. They all worked for a while, but I tired of them. They weren’t quite me.
The style was popular in Europe and North America in the early 20th century among boys and adult men.
I first saw these hats in downtown Providence when I was a boy, the Irish kids who delivered papers and worked the newsstands wore them. I was a skinny little nerdy Jewish kid, and the Irish boys loved to chase kids like me and me and grab our lunch money or even our lunch.
They always left me a little food or money, and I felt I’d like them if they stopped pounding on me. They never did. In a way, it was a kind of game for them.
I ran and hid from them, but I always admired them too.
They seemed fiercely independent and free of the conventions and restrictions that suffocated those of us in the lower middle class. They were always running around with one another; there seemed to be no restrictions. They did what they wanted.
We nerdy kids were never allowed to run free and beat up weaker kids.
Our families would have been horrified.
My family went to New York City once in a while, and I saw the newsboy caps there. I also saw them in movies about Ireland or New York City at the turn of the century. They suggested toughness, hard work, and poverty.
I was in awe of the Irish kids, even as I learned to hide from them in the vast cemetery close to our house. They didn’t like to go there.
That was something they were afraid of. “Jesus would kill me if I went in there,” one of them told me as I raced towards my favorite hiding crypt.”Priests go in there all the time.”
I remember them having the most beautiful blue and green eyes, all lean and fast. And very confident.
I didn’t think of getting a newsboy hat until a week ago when I saw one in a magazine I was reading. Wow, I thought, this looks great. This would be a good hat for me to wear sometimes.
I ordered it and got it today, and Maria loved it at first sight and thought it was “adorable,” which gave me pause. I wasn’t looking for “adorable,” but I thought it fit me and gave some meaning to my independent and rebellious part.
Maybe it was because I was a journalist and associated “newsboy” with that. In the movies, they were often out on the street shouting headlines on the street as they tried to sell newspapers.
Another time, another world.
I wanted a part of it, and as I head for my 75th birthday, I’ll take “adorable” and consider myself a lucky man.
I love my new hat.
(Photo By Maria Wulf)
well done! This hat *screams* Jon Katz! Perfect in every way!
Susan M
Jon,
You made me laugh….you look like the cat that swallowed the canary !!!
Adorable indeed! I love the whole ensemble Jon- it suits you well. You look quite dashing and put together.
I gotta go with Maria on this one Jon. I, too, think it’s adorable. The blue suits you.
I like it! It’s perfect for you.
It’s perfect!!
OMG it is adorable and handsome and there’s a little je ne sais quoi! Good choice.
Gosh…Maria took a great picture there. Fantastic.
I like it! My husband wears one too.
Love the pic!!!
You look so content!
Love it. It’s you for sure.
EXTRY! EXTRY! READ ALL ABOUT IT! I remember those newsstands, street vendors, and in the south, stores that sold out-of-town papers to homesick Yankees.
But, yes – another time, another world. Now, I have to beg for my subscription newspaper. The labor situation has hit our local papers hard, with shortages both in production and delivery. Our papers are encouraging online subscriptions, and smaller papers are eliminating publication days rather than raising prices.
Because of skin cancer risk, I’m never outside during daylight without a hat. Usually, it’s a wide-brim sun hat, or a baseball cap with my initials, that my wife painted as “a reminder”.
A hat is perhaps the best article of men’s clothing for the display of an affiliation. Lately I’ve been researching the Brooklyn Dodgers team that played near where we lived in the 1940s. I’m thinking about getting a replica cap from that period. But, would anyone even know what it was, or why it reads “B” instead of “LA.” Might as well be wearing a jousting helmet.
Great photo of you!! Love the hat, best one yet…it’s you!
That hat is definitely “you” and adorable is the perfect word. You have found your style!
Looks like the cap was custom made just for you!
My father loved those hats…he has been dead 26 years and it is one of the few things I have of his…the other is a Ricoh camera that some day I would like to rehabilitate…You look quite dashing….
Dashing is better than “adorable,” Carol, thanks..
Lookin good!!??
From the thinly disguised smile on your face, I can see that you are really loving the cap!
True, Guy, true.