[Fredslist] Best Hats Response

[fklein at legal.org]

Thanks David. See below
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: "David Abeshouse" <davidlaw at optonline.net>
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 13:36:50 
To: <fklein at legal.org>
Subject: RE: [Fredslist] Hats


Various responses, courtesy of Google, below.  Thanks for helping me to
procrastinate today!

Best,

DJA

 * * * * *


I saw it for the first time in the Hitchcock movie "Shadow of a Doubt" were
"Uncle Charlie" throws his hat onto the bed after being warned by Henry
Travers that it is bad luck.

However, there are some superstition reasons:

"While a bit unclear of its exact origin, it seems the expression comes from
a time when people believed that evil spirits lived in the hair. This
misguided notion was likely fueled from the static electricity that would
discharge in the air when taking a hat off in a warm, dry environment. So
goes the superstition, don't lay your hat where you're going to lay your
head because evil spirits spill out from hats. Of course this doesn't make
much sense. But then again, superstitions seldom do. Another twist on this
misguided notion is one of sanitary origins. Keeping the hat off from the
bed also meant keeping lice from infesting the hat or the bed."



I believe its associated with death, as in putting a hat on a bed is bad
luck as if its portending to someone dying in the house.

I remember my grandmother swatting my baseball cap off of my bed after
seeing that I had put it there. Later she told me it would have been ok if I
put my hat on the bed with the crown down (opening up). I didn't understand
it, but I listened.



More likely than not these stem from taking proper care of a hat. A bed is a
dangerous place for a hat to be placed. As things that are placed on beds
seem to get sat upon. The horror stories, lack of luck etc. can be
attributed to absurd reasons given to others or children so that they do
what is proper because the real reason would not be sufficient. Think of all
the odd things told to children to get them to do as told.....boogie man
anyone?

Remember how expensive a hat once was when made by hand, and still can be.
Oh, I have heard stories like these about placing a hat on a chair as
well....between the two I think I may be on to something but who knows.



It wasn't uncommon to be buried with your hat, either laying on your chest
or in the case of a closed casket placed at the foot of the coffin. So
seeing a hat placed brim down on a resting place, like your bed, was too
close of an allegory to death. Some people probably saw it as an omen, and
then just called it bad luck.

Isn't there some bad luck about laying a wedding dress on a bed or something
as well?




Those of you who have been following HAT BLOG posts will remember the short
article where I discuss Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing and the passage where
Billy visits the Mexican man rumored to be a brujo and almost makes the
serious mistake of putting his hat on the man's bed.  [You can still read
this, "More on Hats and Cormac McCarthy", at the Hats and Literature link on
the right.  It includes a short explanation of the possible origins of this
superstition.]

What was a small reference to this old superstition in The Crossing is no
less than a central theme and the turning point in the movie Drugstore
Cowboy.  After reading about the "hats on beds" superstition, a HAT BLOG
reader asked me if I had seen Drugstore Cowboy and if not, that I was in for
a big surprise.  Boy, was he right.  The drug addicted, paranoid,
obsessively superstitious, main character so much feared the idea of hats on
a bed that it drove him to murder [I think he killed her although I know
it's debatable as she may have died from a self-inflicted drug overdose]
when a drug heist goes bad and he discovers one from his gang had put her
hat on a bed that day.  This action becomes the movie's turning point.  Drug
induced dream sequences featuring hats floating around, becoming larger and
smaller, changing colors, etc. are an integral part of the film's action
demonstrating the power of this idea in the mind of the main character.

Not putting one's hat on a bed may not be as iconic a superstition as not
walking under a ladder, or not breaking a mirror, or doing one's best to
avoid a black cat from crossing one's path, but to many, particulary those
steeped in cowboy culture, it is to be taken very seriously.


 * * * * *


-----Original Message-----
From: fredslist-bounces at gothamnetworking.com
[mailto:fredslist-bounces at gothamnetworking.com] On Behalf Of
fklein at legal.org
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 1:22 PM
To: Freds List; David Klein
Subject: [Fredslist] Hats

My grandson just said "No hats on the bed" and I remembered it was one of my
father's most strident rules which I obviously passed down. Does anyone know
the derivation of this superstition?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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