What isn't
so well known about Hanna is that he had a thing about hats — the kind of hats
amateur sailors wear to impress the hoi polloi and attract witless young ladies. This is what he had to say about them in that
feisty old yachting magazine, The Rudder:
"Anyone
who ventures around yacht clubs, public yacht docks, and such places, is bound
to see many painful sights. Being a patient old man, I just grin and bear most
of them. But one always makes me move to the lee rail. I refer to the hundreds
of men you see wearing either work clothes or any old kind of lounging clothes,
and also a full-dress formal yachting cap.
"Faugh!
It's as disgusting a spectacle as to see a laborer in greasy overalls wearing a
silk opera hat. I doubt if a single one of the men misusing the yacht cap would
make such an ass of himself as to appear publicly in the overalls-and-silk-hat
get-up, yet he blandly goes around day after day in a get-up equally offensive
to good taste. I never could figure why.
"Canvas
hats are the proper thing to wear when swabbing or painting the old barge. For
those hours when you are just loafing around in slacks and any old kind of
shirt, sea-duty caps, with small, soft crowns, can be had, if you feel you must
look very hotsy totsy salty. Hard as it may be to resist the temptation to show
the girls you have the price of a formal yacht cap, if not a yacht, still it is
better to put it away until you don the type of coat, trousers, collar and tie
accepted as formal yachting dress.
"Mind
you, I'm just an old clam digger, and I don't urge anyone to go formal, ever,
if he doesn't want to. Point I am making is, there is but one choice for a man
of any self-respect: either go all the way, or none. Mismatched rag-bag
combinations are definitely out."
Today's Thought
To carry an umbrella without any headgear
places a fellow in a social no man's land — in the category of one hurrying
round to the corner shop for a bottle of stout on a rainy day at the behest of
a nagging landlady.
— John
Newton, Chief of the Tailors' and Garment Workers' Union, London.
Tailpiece
A yachtsman
dressed in a navy-blue blazer and skipper's cap walked into a psychiatrist's
office wearing only plastic wrap for trousers.
"Well
captain," said the shrink, "I can clearly see you're nuts."
(Drop by
every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
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