Your First Introduction to Tilley

I was a college kid in Maine.
During one trip to school during the late 80’s, I stopped in to the Kittery Trading Post and happened across a Tilley hat display.  I was intrigued by the owners manual and by the fact that they were offered in numbered hat sizes.  I tried on the 7 5/8 that I wore in baseball hats back then.  Seemed ok, but the price was about 3x what I would pay even for an official MLB hat at the ballpark, so I put it back.

Fast forward a year or two and I am on the coast of Maine near Pemaquid Point doing some sort of field study for a geology class and spotted a hat wedged between two boulders under a large driftwood tree trunk.  It took me a while, and some harassment from my field group, but I managed to extract the hat.  Well, as you might have guessed, it was a Tilley, stiff with salt and unequally bleached during its apparently long entrapment!  Turned out to be a weatherbeaten T4 in a 7 3/4 size, probably a bit shrunk. Once I cleaned it up and rinsed out the salt, it fit perfectly!  

Wore my found hat all the more proudly knowing the price id seen at KTP.  There had been a name in it at one point but the ink had blurred.  No other paperwork or anything in the crown.  One day, I was on a ferry and took my hat off to use some mounted binoculars when a huge gust of wind whipped it from atop my backpack and away off into the ocean.  I waved as I watched it return to the oblivion from whence it had come into my life.  During my next trip to KTP, circa 1990-1, the Tilleys were even more expensive, but this time I had my Dad in tow.  Nobody loved a fine hat better than my Dad and so with little prodding, he was easily convinced to buy us each a brand new one.  He chose a T1 and I replaced my beloved T4 in 7 3/4, which seemed a bit too large. I still have both hats, though my 7 3/4 is a bit more snug now, I still wear it for gardening but it’s way too stained for socializing.  

Currently, I think I have about a dozen old Tilleys, though some have been usurped by my wife.  Maybe 3-4 of them are winter hats and the rest are a mixture of T4-5 and TMO4-6.  Maybe one or two T1’s.  My preferred size is 7 7/8 now, and I have my eyes peeled for an old school T2.  Missed one on eBay recently as I was feeling too cheap to jump for $50, but now I regret that.  Lol
thanks for the great forum!