From: mss2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Hats
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 23:13:18 GMT

In article <1gqkhtINNq3g@phakt.usc.edu> pechever@phakt.usc.edu (The Heckler) writes:

>Impu-Sebek perks up at this, and rises from the bar:
>About six feet tall, lanky, black jeans, black silk shirt, shoulder-length 
>black hair, hazel eyes, black loafers, long green trenchcoat, black fedora.
>A lot of silver; a ring on every finger

	"I assume that if you have any featureless gold bands, you've
heated them up enough to ensure that there aren't any letters carved
on it which only show up in a fire.  Though if it were _that_ ring, I
suppose we wouldn't be able to see you at all.  :-)"

>slight belly (I'll work out tomorrow...honest! :) same hair and eyes, a 
>leather jacket under the trenchcoat today since it's COLD in California these
>days.

	Michael, who has spent his entire life in the East and
Midwest and braved four Chicago winters, forbears from comment.  :-)

  Blue jeans, t-shirt, lots of silver.  No ring on the right middle finger
>because he's looking for something special.  The spear is now a three-foot
>walking stick of twisted sassafrass with a thick length of copper wound
>around it.  Solid, honest wood.  The fedora's the same

	"Wow, a wooden fedora with copper wound around it?  Neat.
Must be sort of unwieldy, though.  :-) Funny you should mention a
walking stick, though-- I've taken to carrying one myself.  Different
style: also three feet long, but straight and black with a brass
pommel.  Sadly, I may have to give it up, as the pommel came off
recently, and while I jammed it back on, I don't really trust it to
stay that way overlong.  I'd get a new one, but I can't _find_ one
anywhere-- it's as if I got the last one on the face of the planet, or
at least anyplace in Ann Arbor or Chicago that I go to.  Maybe someday
I'll run across one somewhere..."

>"The walking-stick gets me good comments, albeit the occasional puzzled frown.
>Ever so often derision, but from strangers I can ignore--and it's not
>widespread, Goddess be praised.  Calif does seem to have a larger
>weirdness tolerance, although not as much as you'd think.

	"Dunno if it's the fact that my stick looks more conservative,
that people assume it's a medical necessity, or what, but thus far I
haven't gotten anything negative (though ancient paranoia suspects
that some people probably find it amusing).  With the exception of a
few family members, that is-- my dad's clearly bemused by the hat and
stick, and when I took them down to Florida for a family gathering
(shifting to a white straw hat of a similar style, as I wasn't quite
ready to combine 95 degree humid weather with black felt) some of the
older folks clearly found it funny.  But the cousins of my generation
said it looked good-- whether they were being polite or honest I can't
be entirely certain, but I'll take it at face value."

>"I love the hat, and wear it almost always.  It's the third one I've had,
>all identical.  The other two vanished under mysterious circumstances; I 
>suppose I left them in a classroom (I'm very absent-minded).

	"I'm terrified of losing mine, being absent minded myself,
because they're hard to find around here.  The one I have I got on a
trip to Montreal, after looking around for months.  If I lose it, I'm
probably without a black hat at least until I can go shopping in
Chicago, as I don't know of anyplace to look in the Detroit area-- and
in Chicago they're expensive.  Though not as expensive as Montreal if
you count the gas it takes to get there.  :-)   (Not to mention those
taxes!  All Canadians here have my eternal sympathies for the GST and
the gas tax and the restaurant tax and the provincial tax and...)

	"Every so often, my friends make noises about getting me a
sword-stick.  As a devotee of G.K. Chesterton, if nothing else, the
idea appeals to me, though it's probably safer for me and everyone if
I don't go around swinging long pieces of sharpened metal.  And, of
course, they're illegal to carry (though not to own) in a lot of
states, my own included.  (Doubly so: blade more than three inches
long and a concealed weapon to boot.  Not the sort of thing to forget
about and bring to the airport.  :-) )"

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mschiffer@aal.itd.umich.edu	    Virginia (1784)
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