Removing your hat.

When I was a kid, it was emphasized to us that when we entered a building the polite thing to do was to remove your hat.

Heavily emphasized, I might add.

"Head cold?" was the semi sarcastic comment you'd get from some folks about taking your hat off if you were wearing it indoors, or just flat out "take your hat off".  

"Remove your cover" was the comment you'd get from NCO's if you absent-mindedly wore one indoors where you were not supposed to.  You had to wear them, however, in formation in a drill hall, although that was indoors, the military had somewhat inconsistent rules on this.

I suppose they still do.

Little did I realize that earlier in the state's history, it had been statutorily emphasized:

Wyoming Statutes, 1910.

That shows, I suppose, just how common that wearing was.

Caps, Hats, Fashion and Perceptions of Decency and being Dressed.

Some time ago the Old Picture of the Day blog ran a Hat Week, featuring photos of men wearing hats.  The introductory comment to that thread observed that men don't wear hats much anymore, but that the blogger suspected that they'd like to.

 A farming crowd. . .everyone wearing a hat or cap, courtesy of the International Museum of the Horse.

The lengthy thread goes on from there.

Hats have, of course, yielded to caps on a widespread basis, but as that thread explores, caps weren't uncommon then.  Baseball caps as headgear for adults were, of course.  Children wore them informally, but newsboy caps were the cap of the era,

And no wonder. They're superior to baseball caps in every way.

Anyhow, this standard certainly has changed.  A certain percentage of people, and not all of them young by any means, have caps, and occasionally hats, glued to their heads constantly.  People, including men older than me, come in the office with their baseball caps on and do not remove them.  In the courthouse you'll see people wearing them.  People have to be reminded to take them off in court.

Churches are about the only place that you don't see this, or at least I haven't so far.

This shows (and this isn't the only thing), how much standards in this area have really changed.  In the first half of the 20th Century, when hat, including real hats, was a universal feature of being dressed, to wear a hat indoors in some circumstances was a crime. Later it was just rude.  Now, it's common. . . unfortunately.