Who knew?: In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it, You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade

It has long been believed that my favorite US President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was largely responsible for the decline of men wearing hats in the USA. He wore a top hat TO his inauguration, but abandoned it and did not wear it AT his inauguration. The night before his assassination, at a banquet in Fort Worth Texas, JFK was presented with, by his Texan hosts, a cowboy hat as a gift. He politely refused to put it on preferring perhaps to remain true to his New England roots. (Hell, my friend and I wore cowboy hats instead of the traditional mortarboards for our high school graduation ceremony- no big whoop) Some say that the men’s hat industry was declining anyway and that JFK was merely a symbol of this trend, not a causative factor. Who knows?

I like wearing hats. Unfortunately, common business dress codes prevent me from wearing a ball cap most days at work. Who wants their financial reports prepared by an accountant in a baseball cap? I do own a fedora, but I just can’t rock it on the bus to and from work quite the way Don Draper does on Mad Men so why even bother?

I do however get a chance to wear hats on the weekends. I bought a new Twins cap recently that has the old Twins logo with the outline of the state of Minnesota with the twins (Minnie and Paul) shaking hands over the Mississippi River. I bought it in preparation of weekends and evenings I intend to spend listening on the radio and following the Twin's on-line through the Gameday feed on the web.

I won’t be seeing as many games this year as Grandma Ole, and her cable TV connection, are no longer available to me. I will think of her often though as I follow the Twins. I’ll also think of my dad’s dad. He was a HUGE baseball fanatic too. He enjoyed watching baseball as an older man nearly as much as he enjoyed playing it in his younger years.

I’ll think of my dad, who taught me how to play both baseball and football; and of mom, who supported me in all my sports pursuits, even though she was too frightened of my being injured to attend very many games. Of course it didn’t help that as a light-hitting leadoff hitter I realized early on that it was usually easier for me to reach base by getting hit by a pitch rather than me actually hitting a pitch. I only wish that I’d thought of the line Joe Pepitone (an old-time NY Yankee) used when he deliberately got hit by a pitch. After going down like a ton of bricks and laying motionless, the trainer rushed to his side and asked, “Joe, how ya doin’?” With a wink, hidden from the opposing catcher and the home plate umpire, Pepitone replied, “I’m okay, how’s the crowd takin’ it?”

Hats are a great way to set a mood, to let people know where you stand, and to form bonds of affection.

In my youth Easter bonnets were a way of making that Sunday a special event. Grandma Ole embraced that tradition for most of her life as far as I remember.

Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, across many generations sport the caps of their hometown teams at sporting events (especially baseball games) to support their favorites.

Despite what actress Julia Roberts once said, “I enjoy hats. And when one has filthy hair, that is a good accessory.” If I’m wearing a hat it’s not ALWAYS that I didn’t make time to wash my hair.