Ball Caps

A recent trip to New York brought up an old focus on ball caps.  It seems that they may have been designed originally for baseball players,  I'm not sure about that.  I suspect that checking in with the Port Authority company (100% cotton, "Made in Hong Kong") might shed some light;  they seem to make this type of cap for many markets ... the last two I've been given were made by them,  and thus they well may have some "authority" about the wearing of them (?).

On the airplane and in the airport, the wearers of ball caps never took them off,  they seemed to be part of their heads (and I've noticed this at other times and places as well);  the caps seemingly become  unnoticed by the wearer,  a built-in part of the person.  And then I remembered my Grandmother Roberts letting a visitor know (in no uncertain terms) that it was important to take hats off inside the house. Her sense of "civility"  went back to the early part of the past century,  when caps were thought about as an item of clothing which had to do with others and how they were seen by others.

Is this not the case now, what had arbiters of manners said about this in the past (Emily Post and Amy Vanderbuilt for example), and what about now?  I was surprised to hear one of the talk show hosts on NPR/WRP say that his subject for tomorrow is going to be civility ... how quaint!  I think I may listen if I get a chance,  perhaps even get in a call to the expert on the show about hats,  specifically ball caps.  My feeling is that Grandmother would have felt that the constant wearing of the ball cap as some kind of impertinence,  and I'm not sure I don't share that feeling.