You Can Leave Your Hat On
I was in a barbecue joint for lunch today, one of those places that has old advertising signs on the walls for atmosphere.
One of the ads got me thinking. It was for Stetson hats–not the cowboy kind, but the kind gentlemen wore back in the day (or, from the look of this ad, around 1950). The ad said “every man needs three hats. One for business, one for formal wear, and another for sporting events.”
All three hats in the ad looked the same to me, the snap-brim felt hat we associate with old Jimmy Stewart movies, but the copy was adamant that a man was practically naked without an assortment of homburgs and fedoras to choose from. Which is what stopped me: when was the last time you saw anyone wearing a formal men’s hat (other than weirdos or alt-rockers trying to make a statement)? That once-vital industry is gone, long gone, and is not even a memory for anyone under 35. Just like the Polaroid camera. And those little film-developing huts you used to see in mall parking lots. Along with VCRs, videotape, cassettes and 8-track tapes. Also disappearing during the last 20 years or so are tieclasps (men used to wear them to fasten their ties to their shirts. you can see it on Madmen). Suspenders. And little gadgets like bottle openers, and matchbooks. Ask for a book of matches in the next dive bar you go into. Nobody smokes in bars anymore, so those little matchbooks with quaint, local advertising on them have also disappeared from the landscape. (Artist Tony Fitzpatrick has amassed an amazing collection of vintage matchbooks, featured prominently in his painting/collages. Check his work out: www.tonyfitzpatrick.com.
You know what else you don’t see anymore? Milkmen. TV repair shops. Travel agents. Marbles. Fountain Pens. Home perm kits. Moustache wax. Garter belts (at least not in the joints I visit.) And sheet music. I’m told that at the turn of the century the only way to get your hands on the popular songs of the day was to buy sheet music. Now you just google a bunch of Tab sites and learn it while it’s still playing on the radio. Which is another dead icon. The radio. I laughed two weeks ago when Obama staged his rally in Chicago. The local radio stations encouraged people to bring a portable radio with them to listen to the speech. Do you know a single 20-something who has a radio? A portable radio??! 10 years ago there was a radio in everyone’s cubicle. Try finding one now.
I wonder what’s going to disappear next, besides the newspapers. Batteries? TVs? Cameras? Shoe polish? Baked Alaska? DVDs? Babushkas? A woman stopped me in the lobby of our building the other day and asked me where the pay phones were. I actually paused and looked at her, not comprehending exactly what she was asking. A pay phone? The kind you put a quarter in for a couple minutes of talking, and then the operator cuts in and asks for more money? Then I got all existential on her and demanded of her, “Where ARE the pay phones? Where indeed?”
(She backed away. I don’t think she was a big fan or irony.)
November 18th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Letters. What happened to letters? I used own stationery and now when the time comes to write something longer that two sentences in a card, I am scrambling to find a single sheet of paper. Nothing fancy, mind you. Just a plain sheet of loose-leaf paper to write on. Then I feel bad that I’m sending sentiments on plain paper so I don’t send them at all. I just sign my name and mail the card. Very sad…
November 19th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
It was my generational cohorts, the baby boomers, who started loosening up the clothing rules so that people now go to funerals wearing jogging suits. But it was different in 1951–men wore jackets and ties to ball games and even to board airplanes. As for your list of things that have disappeared, how about typewriters, typewriter repairmen, and subway tokens? I yearn for the time when New York was, as John Cheever wrote, “still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.”
November 20th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Isn’t it sad how we’ve let technology and informality rule our lives? I totally agree with Robbie about letters – I don’t remember the last time I received a letter that wasn’t trying to sell me something! And anytime I go to a restaurant that says “formal dress” on its Web site, someone there is always wearing jeans (actually, many someones it seems), and many are wearing khakis – that’s not formal dress to me. Can’t we get dressed up anymore – men with their nice hats and coats and women with our nice hats and suits or dresses? Apparently not.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:51 am
Have we become our parents and/or grandparents where every generation speaks of the old days…..when things were simple and how they didn’t have it as easy as we have now?
Would anyone REALLY want to revert back to sending letters through the mail? Is it so bad that we can immediately connect with anyone, anywhere, with up to the minute information about our lives? Has anything really been compromised, say the personal touch of a handwritten letter versus typing it via email? Are we spoiled? Nostalgia is one thing but…………