Carl Remick wrote:
>
> >From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> >
> >... Yoshie's source puts the divide in the 1960s, but hats were rapidly
> >disappearing from the late '40s on. ...
>
> Turns out you're right. I had the mythic recollection that JFK did in the
> hat, but this website set me straight:
> <http://www.snopes.com/history/american/jfkhat.htm>
The web site mentions Eisenhower's homburg for his first inauguration. I was in the USAF in D.C. at the time, & I remember that someone in the Washington Post wrote a column regretting the president's breaking of custom, seeing it as one more evidence of the decline of western civilization.
Justin is probably right that the decline began early in the century, but I still think that there was a sharp break in the late '40s. I have no memory of ever deciding one way or another on wearing a hat; it simply never occurred to me to wear one. My father wore hats, but I think he stopped wearing one sometime in the '40s or early '50s.
Of course for farm work some sort of hat was essential. So until I escaped that I would wear straw hats in the berry patch or while driving a tractor.
I wonder if the huge popularity of movies in the '30s and '40s had anything to do with it. No place to check your hat.
Carrol