Fifty-Nine Fifty

New camp, new times, new style. The adjustable baseball hats were out and Fifty-Nine Fifty’s were in. Fiited hats, the kind the major leaguers wore. The only problem was the kid’s head hadn’t quite grown up to the fitted hat standards. Nevertheless, he had to have a fitted hat, head-size be damned! Everyone had one at Camp Anglewood.

            As for that tiny head of his, well that presented quite the problem. After searching every corner of the local mall with his dad in search of a six-and-five-eighths Cleveland Indians hat to absolutely no avail, drastic measures had to be taken. The Cheltenham Square. The biggest possible ghetto for a mall that could possibly be in the near area. Half-an-hour away and infested with guns, crime and robbery, their HatWorld sold that precious hat. An hour after determining this information, the kid and his brave dad marched through the mall with their heads held high and purchased that Cleveland Indians hat, the smallest possible size available. Leaving the Cheltenham Square, the dad told his kid that if he ever found himself in that mall again that he would be robbed nine times out of ten and to just let the people have what they wanted, and that material items were replaceable but life was not.

            After trying on the fifty-nine fifty in every way possible, the kid could see that it was still too big for his 10-year-old head. Dad to the rescue again, this time however with a sticky bandage that he cut up and placed inside the fold of the hat. Boom – perfect fit. After a little curvature to the brim and the removal of the stickers (it was cooler to take them of back in those days) he was ready to rock. By the end of the summer, that hat had fallen in the lake on more than one occasion.