Steve Lundeberg

I’ve always liked hats and probably own a couple hundred of them.

Mainly they are baseball hats representing OSU and a variety of major league teams, but I also have a handful of beanies (what some others call stocking caps or toques), three Indiana Jones hats and five of what my son Bob calls my “Scottish sheepherder hats.”

It was that last category of headpiece that sparked a spirited discussion in the newsroom Wednesday.

I’ll spare you the details of how this all got started, but basically Carrie Petersen and I were talking about a variety of topics when I happened to mention I had these hats that no one seemed to know the official name of. I tried with little success to describe them, then asked her if she’d ever seen “The Grapes of Wrath,” because I remembered Henry Fonda, as Tom Joad, wearing such a cap.

Finally, I went to the Internet Movie Data Base and pulled up a picture — and that’s when a variety of other people got involved in the discussion, which among other things turned to a Disney musical called “Newsies” that I’d heard of but never seen (I don’t like musicals in general, and for the record, the Jets and Sharks singing and dancing their way through a gang fight in “West Side Story” remains the most ridiculous scene in movie history).

Ultimately, Carrie, Karen Petersen (no relation) and others declared that the hat is best known as a “newsboy” or “newsie,” while Kim Jackson figured “cabbie cap” was the best option.

Well, I don’t really like either of those names, so from on I’m just going to refer those specimens in my collection as my “Henry Fonda hats.”

Just so you know what we’re talking about, here’s a look at Fonda as Joad:

And here’s a pic of me as Fonda as Joad:

I told Kim I was trying to effect that vacant, hopeless, Depression-era look.

“Did it work?” I asked him.

“No,” he said after a pause. “You still look like you have stuff.”

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