Great T-Shirts I Have Known, part one…
Over the years, and I do mean over the years (you will see what I mean below), I have collected t-shirts. Some to wear and some to have. All of them have dear memories attached to them. Recently, though, I decided I needed to make some space in my life and in our house. That meant going through boxes, including the boxes of t-shirts I’d kept, but not worn in ages. I decided it was time to lose the t-shirts, but preserve the memories by taking photos of them before I let them go. Here are a few of them, along with the memories they evoke for me. There is no particular order, and it may take multiple blogs (or at least multiple sittings) to share them all.
Physical Education T-Shirt, Freshman, McDowell High School (really Old Fort High School, 1972)
I told you this went back. Can you believe it? I saved my 9th grade physical education t-shirt. Although it says McDowell High School, this was the year before we were actually consolidated (construction was still underway for the new high school and junior high), so we were still located at Old Fort High School. It was all new for me. My parents had moved us “onto the farm” in Old Fort over the Summer and I was starting at a new school in the Fall. It was my first time…taking physical education, changing clothes in front of a bunch of people, showering with a bunch of people, and doing any sort of physical education that wasn’t the team sports from elementary school. Random things I remember include: coming around a bend in the school bus and seeing a white clad figure run out the back of their house and down to the outhouse…meeting friends with whom I still correspond…cutting and selling pulp wood to make money…more. Fond memories from that time. Fond memories of the year spent at the old high school.
Physical Education T-Shirt, Freshman, Wake Forest University (1975)
Keeping with the theme, I also saved my physical education t-shirt from my freshman year of college at Wake Forest. I actually enjoyed phys. ed. at Wake Forest, took several classes including golf, tennis and gymnastics. Another banner year, and one I will never forget. First time away from home, first time living with other people in a dorm (there were eight of us in a suite with four bedrooms and a bathroom). For a kid who was an only child from rural Western North Carolina, this was an education all by itself. I can recall all my roommates faces and names, although I never kept in touch with any of them after college. My own roommate John D. Williams (from Ypsilante, Michigan, dropped out), Tom Mann (graduated), Rick Sears (transferred to NC State after Freshman year), Richard K. (Rick) Pulling (graduated), Christopher Ingram (graduated and became a doctor at Duke), plus two more — David Dickenson, who transferred (I think)and later posed for Playgirl and his roommate Karl Weist who played rugby and didn’t drive. He became a lawyer. The biggest lesson I learned that year was that no matter how smart you might have thought you were, you weren’t. I’d been at the top of my class and National Honor Society, earned a scholarship to WFU (the only way my family could have afforded to send me there), and yet, almost flunked out (thanks largely to Calculus) my Freshman year. Public school in Western North Carolina (at least mine) did not prepare any of the three of us who went to WFU for the demands of college. All three of us survived, but none of us thrived that year. And yet in the end, we all did okay, and we graduated. I cannot say that for up to half of my Freshman class.
SpringFest T-Shirt, Sophomore, Wake Forest University (1976)
My Sophomore year, I discovered SpringFest, and the 1972 movie, BROTHER SON, SISTER MOON by Franco Zeffirelli. I fell in love with the film and the music (performed by Donovan). Little did I know exactly why I loved the movie so much at the time. Many years later, I purchased a copy of the dvd so I could watch it again.…