Anybody got one of these???

[dhermann1]

<img src="http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/7639/beanieje0.jpg" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us"/>

Freshman beanie, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, fall 1964. Older folks, please try to explain to the younger ones what this is. It will strain their credulity, but try to impress upon them what a simple and primitive world it was back then. Try to explain to them how all freshmen were required to wear this bizarre object on their heads the entire first semester. Explain how in even more primitive times, freshmen had to wear them all year. Explain to them the insane sport the upper classmen used to play by stealing these "Beanies". And impress upon them how lucky they are to live in this modern, enlightened time.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

Wow, what a great piece of college history!!
Hey, I did see "Animal House", I know what a freshman Beanie is!

 

[Topper]

Looks rather an like old prep-school Cap / cub-scout cap

 

[dhermann1]

Well, the idea was to be demeaning as possible. I guess in the 19th and early 20th century "Public School" boys would have worn hats pretty much like these through their whole school time, at least they they were "first form", right? I'll bet if you go far enough back this would have been every day wear for any boy, in a more wearable version. Anyhow, moth eaten as it is, I still get a charge out of it.

 

[Topper]

Not just the first part of the 20th Cent! Carried on to the latter half too


4 year old wearing a Old Cub cap!

http://ascot-tophats.co.uk/public/cub001.jpg

 

[akaBruno]

You just have to ask yourself, "WHat does it mean to me?"

Obviously a lot.

BRUNO

 

[Wolfmanjack]

Freshman beanies had nearly disappeared from the campus scene when I entered college in the mid '50s. In my freshman class were a large number of Korean War vets on the GI Bill. Believe me, no one was going to tell those guys to wear some stupid beanie.

 

[analogist]

Beanie

Hello dherman;

I got one! My brother started RPI in 1950 and his beanie is in my hat collection. I also have my own from Harpur College (now SUNY Binghamton)
and both of our senior hats from James Madison HS in Brooklyn.

Quite a bit of my life history is intertwined with my collections.

analogist