Edge City by Terry and Patty LaBan for October 19, 2024

The front brim is down, and he’s ready for town.

With few exceptions, men who wear hats …wear baseball caps today.

I wear a variety of hats, mostly ball caps and flat caps but sometimes a straw fedora in the summer and a wool fedora in the winter. The only ones I get compliments on are the fedoras and quite often at that. Maybe it’s because I’m old and folks just think I look age appropriately dapper. Of course, it also helps if you dress like a grownup when wearing such hats.

I’ve always found hats pretty pointless. They easily blow off in the wind and they don’t even cover much. If it’s cold enough for me to need something covering my head, it’s cold enough for me to wear a winter coat with a hood that also covers my neck and ears. And that’s attached and tied down so I don’t lose it. (And now that I’ve moved to Arizona, that coat can just stay in the closet collecting dust until the next time, if any, that I ever have the misfortune of having to take any trips back north).

She’s one to speak with that hair style.

Hats protect the head from sun and cold. Worn properly — Len is wearing his properly! — they look elegant and/or stylish. The small brim hats that hipsters are reputed to like seem useless from all those viewpoints: protection and style. But Len’s is a nice fedora, though the green is a little difficult to accept.

Oh boy can we ever.

Not too many years before “flat hats” became more popular I began wearing them. I wore them because I enjoyed them. I did not care what others may have said. Now quite a few men wear them and often we tip our hats to each other in passing.