Here’s my Grandson on his ninth birthday wearing my hat. “I love hats of every kind, Granddaddy!” In fact, he has quite a few baseball caps displayed in his bedroom. He wouldn’t give me my hat back the whole evening, so later I bought him one of his own. "Just like Granddaddy's." He’s a good kid and this is a good photo. July 2005.
Sean, I remember I told you that your picture would be first on my blog. Well, I slipped up a little and posted your great-granddaddy’s picture first. Hope you don’t mind. I love you.
I’m looking for people whose hats are part of their persona. Readers are welcome to submit photos of People Who Wear Hats. Please submit a jpeg. attachment to an e-mail. Do not include the photo in the body of the e-mail. Send to mr.paulnichols@yahoo.com. (Yes. there a 'dot' in there.) In the subject line please put “[Your name’s] Inner Hat.” Your e-mail address will not be sold, distributed or used for any purpose. You may submit as many photos as you can handle, but please keep the image size down.
First, the subject(s) of your photo must be a person or people wearing a hat(s). That’s the whole point of This Cool Blog, right? Any gender. Any age. Any category. Pictures easily obtained from the Internet probably won’t be posted here. If you took a picture of a well-known person, you’d probably be better off publishing or selling it elsewhere.
By submitting a picture, you give me permission to publish the picture and its accompanying text on this cool blog. I may contact you later to publish it elsewhere; such as in a Pulitzer Prize-winning coffee table book or something. Can’t guarantee that.
When submitting a photo, please give me your first and last name. Then give me the first name only of the person(s) in the photo. Nicknames are acceptable. Please give me the name of the state and the month/year the picture was taken. Notice how I have formatted the other pictures on this cool blog.
With your photo(s) please include a short—a short!—paragraph about the person, the hat or both. One hundred word limit please. Quotations are welcome and encouraged. Lucky me, lucky you. I have the right to edit your short paragraph for proper spelling, punctuation, grammar and length and so forth. Succinct paragraphs are best and quotations bring your pictures to life. Honest.
I may or may not publish the picture(s) you send. I will not publish objectionable photos (naughty stuff, seditious, slanderous, demeaning and the like). I’ll be the judge. If you send me objectionable photos, I will put your e-mail address in the black hole of “Block Sender” and you will be banned forever. As nice as I am, I won’t care.
I will try to notify you when/if I use your photo. (No guarantees.) Tell your friends.
So hurry! Be the first on your block to send me your creative, crazy, delightful, lovely fun pictures of people wearing their hats. Let's have fun.
I never dedicated anything to my dad, so I guess this will have to do. He passed away in 1981. Up till then he put on a hat every time he stepped outside. He only had three hats that I remember, but they were important to him.
Way back before the Depression, he worked for the Rock Island Railroad. It broke his heart when he was laid off. He couldn’t get railroading out of his blood so he wore this engineer’s hat whenever he was tinkering around in the backyard. And he tinkered a lot.
When he went to town, or any place casual, he donned his Panama hat similar to this one. Any time he entered a building, he removed it. And any time he walked past a lady, he tipped it.
Dad was an Immigration officer for 37 years, so he wore a government issue “saucer” hat at work. 
He lived his whole life in the Midwest and the West, but never wore a cowboy hat. I loved him anyway.
