Blast From the Past

Swooping townie cyclers de-beany hapless frosh
Tuesday, September 29, 1964

Beany snatching is a College tradition. Freshman girls are presented with the beanies on one night, and townies snatch them away the next morning. The beanies were presented Friday night — Saturday morning the boys were congregating in Tappan Square.

“Three hundred freshman girls this year!” a little townie screamed ecstatically.

“He snatched my beany — right off of my head!” a Dascomb girl wailed.

“They just do it for the kicks,” a College student who grew up in Oberlin explained in a blaise manner.

“But those were the good ol’ days,” another College-student townie sighed nostalgically. “I still have two beanies to remind me of those days of high adventure.”

Beany snatching is a thrill-packed sport for the little townies. “Some girls put pins in their beanies!” was lamented several times. “My hands got all…yuck!” one boy described.

Another complained, “One girl called me a dink. So I called her a RAT fink.”

“And one chased me with an umbrella down that alley!” a colleague of his raved and pointed. “Right up the stairs too. But she didn’t get me. I gave the beany back.”

The general consensus was that beany snatching is best performed on a bike. A townie spots a girl and waits until she is about 200 yards away; then he charges past her and snatches the beany from her head. “But first you make sure there aren’t any College boys around,” the bespectacled townie warned.

The usual fate of beanies is to be hung up in the bedroom as trophies. Some youngsters, however, wear the beanies; “And some take them downtown and sell them back,” cried a small boy. “They ask about 50 cents.” He added, “I usually give them back,” seemingly a little disappointed with himself.

Some townies, however, do not snatch beanies. “Not me, man!” a tough little boy by the Apollo said as he shook his head emphatically. “The cops’ll get ya. They get ya if ya snatch anything off someone’s head.”

There is not a gang or ring leader, however. “We’re just by ourselves,” the boy explained. “We see who can get the most.”
“I got six last year,” the largest boy boasted.

Beany snatching appears to be a dying sport, however. In recent years, beanies have been worn only two days as opposed to a whole week in the past; and furthermore, the sophomore girls who presented the beanies to their little sisters did not insist upon their being worn.

Consequently, interest among in the part of the town boys is wanning, and many boys did not even realize that it was “beany day.”