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		The Cat in the Hat It's better to look good and to feel good. By Herbert Hadad Feeling like a child peering through the glass at a penny-candy counter, I paused at the shop window in lower Manhattan, considering the styles and colors and prices, weighing which would convey a certain swagger, a mature flair, without rendering me conspicuous on the street. I was looking at hats. I had no interest in the tweed or the leather caps. I was absorbed by the traditional felt hats, the ones with a brim and a crown and a cloth band, which every man used to own. These hats were old-fashioned. You rarely saw them on heads these days. Nonetheless, the desire persisted, and the visits to the window went on for almost two years. One day, my wife, Evelyn, said, “Your birthday’s two weeks away. You haven’t asked for anything.” “A real men’s hat,” I replied, quickly. Unsure of my own judgment, I coaxed an office colleague, James, to join me at the shop with the window: The Hat Corner, at Beekman and Nassau Streets, near the World Trade Center site. After trying on several, I found a hat that was really special. James observed me in the mirror, and nodded and smiled. It was blue gray, with stylish creases on either side of the brim, a black silk band, and a dash of multicolored feathers. It was made by Tesi, not “of Florence,” but “of Firenze.” It fit perfectly. “It’s called the New Yorker,” the proprietor said. He steamed it and waterproofed it, placed it in a box, and took my $69.95. That night, I modeled the hat for my wife and daughter. Though they made approving sounds, the next morning I was afraid to wear it. I didn’t want to be the only one. Every weekday, I pass through Grand Central Terminal, the epicenter of Manhattan. Hundreds of thousands of people from every walk of life race, amble, dawdle, eat, meet, and flirt in its great concourse and corridors. The morning after I bought my hat, I alighted from the commuter train and cast my gaze around like a hat-seeking beacon. I saw a corduroy cap, a few ubiquitous Yankees caps, a floppy Crocodile Dundee, but not one real men’s hat. From then on, I searched for men in hats. Eagerly. Fruitlessly. One afternoon, aiming for the 6:15 home, I spotted in the crowd a felt brim. Excited, I trailed it across the bustling concourse. It veered into a hallway that leads to Madison Avenue. I followed, picking up speed. I was twenty-five feet away when my heart sank. The brim was on a black hat; the man below was dressed in a black suit. I could see the religious tassels beneath his white shirt. He was an ultra-Orthodox Jew. He had to wear his hat. I raced back to my platform disappointed, barely making the train in time. This hat matter called for more boldness: I would wear mine and wait for others to follow; I might even start the trend. I arrived at the office in my hat. “Here comes Bogart,” said a guard. “Good morning, Dick Tracy,” said a secretary. I ran into one of my bosses. “All you need is a press card stuck into the band,” he said. All good reactions. That night, my sister-in-law Carol, in town for a visit, said warmly, “The hat reminds me of Daddy.” It was a casual remark that sparked a curious memory. It is midcentury. I’m about five years old, riding the carousel at Nantasket Beach, on a horse with flaring nostrils and wild mane. I see two figures. My mother clasps her hands tightly at the waist, anticipating my taking a terrible spill. My father, relaxed and smiling, watches from beneath his gray felt hat with the black band and the feather. Every time I come around, I look for his hat, and know that when I grow up I want one, too. I’d have one sooner than I realized. A dozen years later, as a Northeastern freshman and co-op copy boy at the Boston Globe, I quickly realized you had no chance of being appointed a reporter without a hat. All the reporters wore hats. Even the editors wore hats. I went down to Raymond’s, a store for shoppers who considered Filene’s Basement a little chichi. Raymond’s slogan was “Where U Bot the Hat.” I bot a hat. It was made not by Tesi of Firenze, but by Harry the Hatter of Lynn, Boston, Gloucester, and Salem. I immediately began wearing it to work. In those days, a hat made sense. It imparted standing, a position in the community. The look said, Here is a lad who wants to be a newspaperman one day. Today, my passion for hats was a little harder to explain. I decided to visit The Hat Corner and get a professional’s assessment. David Jacknel, the proprietor who sold me mine, said he’d been purveying hats for forty years. I asked if John F. Kennedy had really undermined the hat industry by appearing at his 1961 inauguration bareheaded. “It was wrecked before JFK,” Jacknel said. “Lindbergh was a national hero, and he didn’t wear a hat.” Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, almost thirty-five years before Mr. Jacknel entered the industry, so there must have been some New York cynicism in his answer. “In the old days,” he continued, “there were just as many hat stores as shoe stores, one on every block. Now there are three or four in the city.” As we spoke, a half-dozen shoppers tried on hats. I picked up one discounted to $20 and asked Jacknel what it was made of. “Fur felt,” he said. “A combination of rabbit hair and wool, steamed and pressed together.” “So what exactly determines hat fashions?” I asked. “Weather,” he said. “If it’s warm in winter, you’re dead. Cold in summer, you’re dead. Weather is your best salesman.” I thought back to the morning I went to visit my wife and our third baby in the hospital for the first time. Dressed in a suit and tie, I was about to race out the door when the mirror stopped me. I was going to a celebration, participating in a milestone. I needed a hat. I found my old Boston Globe model and left the house. Mr. Jacknel sold nice hats, but he was no social scientist. It had to be more than weather. Last fall at Grand Central, I was happy to see a modest number of hats darting by. I had an urge to slip into the information booth, take the microphone, and say, “Attention, all men. The felt hat is coming back. Buy one or brush yours off, and start wearing it tomorrow. You’ll feel good. You’ll look good. Thank you.” One evening, I was browsing in the market at the station’s east end. Pausing at the spices counter, I saw a handsome man of about thirty-five, wearing a finely made russet-colored hat. When I admired it, he took it off to show it to me. It was a Tesi, made in Firenze. “Beekman and Nassau?” I said. We laughed. We both bought from The Hat Corner. “Remember the old baseball photos?” I asked him. “Men in suits and hats cheering at the major league games?” “Sure,” he said. “If fans dressed better now, baseball would be a better game.” “And wasn’t part of the excitement of Broadway dressing up for the play and the dinner afterwards?” He agreed, and we lamented the slovenly apparel, the cut-off jeans and the T-shirts, worn to the theater now. I decided to miss my train. “One more thing I love about wearing a hat—I watched my dad do this a thousand times. As a lady approached, he’d grasp the brim and tip it ever so slightly. You could see the gesture pleased the woman, and it made his day.” My new friend and I exchanged cards; he was a vice president at an asset-management company. I asked him why he wore a hat. “I started wearing one about a year ago, after looking at pictures of my grandfather,” he said. “It harkens back to a day when people were nicer to each other.” How simple. His hat symbolized a yearning for civility, a plea for a way of life in which everybody understands and appreciates the rules. We parted, ready to start a trend. Herbert Hadad, a Northeastern graduate who lives outside New York City, is a prize-winning freelance writer and a 6-7/8.