I've had the pleasure as your faithful columnist to comment on several ugly FV t-shirts. Indeed one of my favorite entries overall was a discussion of a synthetic mesh staff shirt that would literally melt on you on a hot check-in Sunday.But now that I ponder the situation I realize that, where camp clothing nostalgia is concerned, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.
At the most recent big reunion, we held an auction to benefit camperships. A number of folks brought old FV t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and other old canteen/store items. These went for remarkably high prices. One old Wawayanda child-size hooded sweatshirt (with the old logo showing two campers paddling a long canoe, presumably across Lake Wawayanda) was sold, I believe to Amy Ketcham, for $250! Another hoodie was bought by Eileen Barnes for something like $400! I paid far less for a weird-looking non-logo staff t-shirt, gray background with black lettering and a hasty pink zigzag across. I can't place the year but I'm making an educated guess: late 80s. Can anyone seeing this write me (afilreis [at] gmail [dot] com) and tell me precisely when? From the mid-80s and earlier (and I'm assuming all the way back), there was simply a staff
shirt for the summer, and no other. By now I notice there are various shirts and sweatshirts made, especially for the very end of the summer--and some of these quite informal. Village staffs design an item. VCs of one of the camps get together to do one. So I'm guessing that this speciman is one of the early staff-designed supplemental shirts. Am I right? At the time of the auction my son wanted it and has worn it several times since. But now he's outgrown it and I'll bring it with me this summer--to give away as a prize to a lucky winner at Challenge Night.
[Ugh, I'm told by several reliable sources that this shirt was indeed the staff shirt that summer. Karin Turer confirms it's '89 or '90. Next we'd like to find out who designed it. Was it you, Peter Swain?]
