Hat story was the last straw
There was a time when wearing a straw hat was de rigueur from Easter to September.
On Sept. 14, 1930, The Daily Oklahoman offered reporter Meredith Williams' take on the straw hat:
“This is the annual straw hat story. Try holding your breath until somebody writes one with a new crack in it.
“On or about September 14 of every year the city editor scans his staff for a reporter who has winked at the society editor, or split an infinitive, or committed some other heinous journalistic offense, and forthwith orders the unfortunate one to write the straw hat story.
“It is supposed to be something about the end of the straw hat season and it is supposed to be humorous. The virtuous practice has been going on since congressmen, cockroaches, city editors and other necessary evils infested this world, and it is sadly to be supposed it will continue to go on to the end of time.
“Year after year you will pick up the paper some time in September and there will be the straw hat story trying to make a noise like a news item ...
“To be historical about it, Eve wrote the first straw hat story in the autumn of the year that Adam discovered the utilitarian qualities of fig leaves.
“Adam had not only made his B.V.D.'s, a shaving brush and a portable phonograph out of fig leaves, but he had also had made a hat of them, and there he was in the middle of September faced with the inevitable problem of what to do with his straw hat, which could not be simply put out, like the cat or the parlor lamp.
“`Ha, ha,' said Eve, in French, getting a great kick out of his bewilderment, `why don't you grind it up for breakfast food?'
“... Anyway, that explains the origin of the straw hat story, and newspapers ever since have been suggesting that you make breakfast food of your summer lid, or trade it for a sled, or make it into a jardiniere.
“Probably the best way to handle this most vexing of problems is to take the hat into the kitchen, fill it full of hootch, and then swallow the whole works.
“Here's looking at you!”