Anecdotal Evidence: You Must Raise Your Hat'

Anecdotal Evidence: You Must Raise Your Hat'
Excerpt:

Thanks to Frank Wilson and Dave Lull for alerting me to a wonderful conversation with Jacques Barzun about his arrival in New York City in 1920. Barzun, who celebrates his 104^th birthday on Nov. 30, embodies civilization. He seems to have read everything and his memory for detail is phenomenal. He recalls that wristwatches were for “sissies” until American soldiers returning from Europe after the Armistice were seen wearing them. Spaghetti was an “exotic dish” until almost overnight it became thoroughly Americanized. Barzun moves on to hats:

“Men always wore hats. There was a famous businessman who was interviewed as he landed back from a trip to Europe and he was asked what the great movements were that he was apprehensive about. He said, `Communism and hatlessness!’”

President Kennedy forty years later is often credited with pushing the nation, at least the male portion, into hatlessness...

[***Another proof, in case anyone needed it, of the 'nervous passivity' of everyone's unwillingness to stand out from the crowd[i.e., herd] Jesus experienced that, too, BTW.]