The T shirt project Part I, The seventies, wherein I struggle to find my identity but manage to mention my father in almost every description.

I collect T-shirts. perhaps it’s more correct to say that I have  a collection of them because I never throw any of them out. The only ones I no longer have were worn and washed to the point that they disintegrated.  T-shirts are such a great way of making  a public statement of your individuality, or at least attempting to. Just what I needed back then and still rely on now,

It started in my teens. I can’t think of an actual event, or particular shirt or any specific beginning time but it had something to do with my graphic arts class. Jr. High school was the closest approximation of prison I have ever experienced, in terms of both its regimentation and brutality. The only classes I didn’t hate were graphic arts, a shop class, and art. I learned how to do silk screen printing using a photo mask made from a high contrast original image.  I also loved photography and Nikon cameras because that’s what my father used. I made this shirt as a class project. It’s not an original idea, but I drew the camera myself from a Nikon ad in a magazine. A Nikon F2 Photomic circa 1974. I still regard it as one of the best things I ever drew. It was printed too close to the collar to be realistic but that way it lay flat on your breast bone. I made a few of these, My father wore one for a while, he was the envy of his students. Vulcanized rubber base ink still holds up. I was fourteen.

High School sucked somewhat less than Jr, High School but it was devoid of any shop or art classes for me. Gym. It was called then as now, Physical Education but who are they kidding? What a waste of my time. I remember that in one semester of my senior year my name wasn’t called during the first day of class so I never went again. I just went to the library instead during that period. For some reason I got a “satisfactory” grade even though I never showed up. This shirt is not my original one That was stolen from my locker. This was given to me by a friend several years later but it’s a vintage standard issue shirt. You were supposed to write your name in permanent ink in the oval but I don’t remember any of us doing it. The colors were maroon and gold. (hard to see here) Incidentally, our teams were called “the Maroons”. Were they ever!

  I stayed in touch with the graphic arts teacher from Jr. high and when a German Club T-shirt project arose I offered to print them. Someone else drew the picture. I don’t remember her name. It’s pretty good really.  Deutscher Verein, German club. Notice that it’s printed in two colors? Yeah, I was that bad ass.

Meanwhile at Weymouth South High, ( I went to North), they had some pretty cool German club shirts too. Somebody bought this for me at a fund raiser at the school. It says kummere dich um deine eigenen angelegenheiten which means mind your own business in German. Hysterical. I wore it until you could see through it.

When cross country skiing was still exotic, and new, and counter culture...yes there was  a time. I got some gear from Eastern Mountain Sports (which I still have) but I also patronized a local ski shop to buy wax and other crap.  This shirt was in a bargain bin. Lovett skis, now long gone. Check out the diagonal stride on those ski racers. Three color silk screen, still like new.

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In a sad but, I suppose, typical attempt to be cool, I hung out in Harvard square. I loved the book stores and news stands and record shops. I bought my comics there and my shirts too. There used to be a shop around the corner from the harvard square theatre that printed shirts and did while-you-wait dye transfer prints too. They always had hip stuff, stuff no one else had. I was a big Doonesbury fan and loved Zonker. Here’s a pair of old school Doonesbury shirts. Zonker is so cool he’s wearing a T-shirt himself,  a simple star, his signature outfit. Check Mike Doonesbury’s hair. Both of these shirts were pale blue when new. I wore the crap out of the Zonker one. The Mike Doonesbury one was my father’s. He took better care of it.

I was an avid reader of The National Lampoon. A rag so utterly perverted I don’t know why neither of my parents ever complained about it.  Actually they thought it was funny too. OK, my father thought it was funny. I often credit that magazine with teaching me how to write.  It’s all their fault! Long before P. J. O’Rourke became a professional right wing tool he was not only subversive but funny. They also had a great collection of cartoon strips every month: Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie, Vaughn Bode’s Cheech Wizard, and Bobby London’s Dirty Duck. Dirty Duck was absolutely sick and of course riotously funny to me. To have him on  a shirt,  man,  nobody would even know what that was! This is a dye transfer which had to be done on a 100% polyester shirt. Just as crappy feeling and as good looking now as it was then.

Where the hell did this Harpo Marx shirt come from? I want to say it was from the same shop as the Doonesbury shirts. I really loved the Marx brothers.  I had a Groucho shirt too but that wore out. Anything, even another generation's nostalgia, to set myself apart. 

My father was a ceramic artist and had some shirts from conferences and other clay related things. This one with the pyro cones is from a conference in Madison. Great looking shirt. The other one, Cedar Heights Air Floated Clay, is a unique bit of  clay ephemera. It looks like the Lebanese flag.

I was  a scuba diver back in high school. I did dives from the beaches of Boston’s South Shore. To get a chance to dive in tropical water was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity. I went out on a dive boat from Key Largo Florida. My father was living in Miami then and I was visiting him.  This is a souvenir shirt from Bill Crawford’s Tropic Isle Dive Shop.  Ugly and tasteless but at least it’s in subdued colors. I remember wearing it to school. Did I mention how much high school sucked?

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 Coming soon: Part II, the rock and roll years