Welcome! Imaginary Shirt is a project where I research visual elements from high schools’ histories and then use them to make new t-shirt concepts. If you’re associated with one of these schools and would like to make any of these imaginary shirts a reality, let me know! I’d love to help you accomplish that. This companion newsletter gives some more details on process and on the schools featured. Enjoy!
Instagram Week in Review
Monday, 24 April 2023—Marquette University High Hilltoppers, Milwaukee, WI
When reviewing the source material for Marquette, I found this nice piece from the 1939 Flambeau yearbook:
As it’s signed by a “Bob Schweitzer,” I thought I might take a look to see if I could find out what became of ol’ Bob Schweitzer. Turned out, it wasn’t hard! He is almost certainly Dr. Robert Schweitzer, identified by his obituary as “past president of the American Cancer Society and renowned surgical oncologist.”
Which leads me to think (for the millionth time) about signatures and my project. It’s not uncommon for illustrations that I find to have signatures, and I virtually always scrub them. The intent is not to deprive the artist of credit, though I guess it’s the result. At the end of the day, it seems like they just don’t belong on the shirts. I try to be as clear as possible that almost all of the art is sourced, but it seems visually wrong to include the signatures. Is that ethically wrong? Maybe? If I was ever to decide to sell anything, I certainly would take a much closer look at it. What do you think?
See more designs from the Marquette set here.
Tuesday, 25 April 2023—Marinette Marines, Marinette, WI
Marinette, Wisconsin is right across the Menominee River from Menominee, Michigan, and the Marinette Marines and Menominee Maroons have been playing each other in football since 1894—when Grover Cleveland was president. U.S. Representatives Bart Stupak (MI) and Steve Kagen (WI) were known to make a friendly wager on the game; in 2009 Stupak put up “a batch of traditional Yooper pasties” against Kagen’s Wisconsin cheese curds. (Menominee won, 27-20.) In 2006, Stupak read a tribute to the annual “M&M Game” into the Congressional Record, noting that:
…every fall, town pride boils up and the team colors come out as the two towns prepare for the annual game. Together, Marinette and Menominee are transferred into an exceptional Midwestern fall festival as area residents organize a celebration of this great tradition. Through events like parades, tug of war contests, battles of the drums, a community yell contest, a powder puff game, fireworks and a bonfire, the people of Menominee and Marinette celebrate their shared history through good natured competition.
Sounds pretty good to me! I do have one suggestion, though. I propose that every year on the Saturday morning after the game, the brave and/or foolish will gather at either Taco Bell in Menominee (if the Maroons won) or Blue Bike Burrito in Marinette (if the Marines won.) A race will ensue where participants eat an entire meal, run the 1.2 miles across the not-so-creatively named Interstate Bridge, eat an entire meal at the other restaurant, and then run back to where they started. The winner will be the M&M King or Queen. Let’s do it!
See more designs from the Marinette set here.
Wednesday, 26 April 2023—North Division Blue Devils, Milwaukee, WI
When I was doing preliminary research for North Division, I saw it listed that one of its students had been fourth Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir. I may not have thought much of it, except that I seemed to recall having seen her listed as a student at Denver’s North High School when I was doing research for that school. And sure enough! Golda Meir was born in Kyiv (in what was then the Russian Empire, but is now Ukraine) in 1898 (on May 3, so if you’re reading this the day it comes out, you don’t have much time to prep for your annual “Golda Meir’s Birthday Party.”) She moved to Milwaukee in 1906, attended North Division in 1912, and moved to Denver the following year, where she studied at North.
At the age of 11, she and her amazingly named friend Regina Hamburger founded the American Young Sisters’ Society to raise money for textbooks. You can see a postcard that Golda Meir wrote to Regina Hamburger in 1918 here.
See more designs from the North Division set here.
Thursday, 27 April 2023—Pius XI Popes, Milwaukee, WI
Pius XI graduate Adam Stockhausen is an Academy Award-winning production designer who has worked with Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Steve McQueen, and Steven Spielberg. He won the Oscar for Best Production Design for The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I’m looking forward this summer to seeing TWO movies that he has worked on—Asteroid City and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
See more designs from the Pius XI set here.
Friday, 28 April 2023—Pulaski Rams, Milwaukee, WI
I have had the vague impression that Casimir Pulaski was a hero of the American Revolutionary War, and that is correct. Born in Warsaw, Brigadier General Count Pulaski (the first of two brigadier generals in today’s newsletter!) is often said to have saved George Washington’s life at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777. But what I did not have any idea about was that recently there has been some speculation (based on some science) that Pulaski may have been an intersex person. In 2009, Pulaski, who was famous for telling George Washington, “I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it,” became only the eighth person to be made an honorary United States citizen.
See more designs from the Pulaski set here.
Saturday, 29 April 2023—Riverside University High Tigers, Milwaukee, WI
In 1964, Riverside had a Poster Club, and the design on this shirt is taken from some of their work. I love it! On the original poster, underneath the artwork appeared these words: “THE FEARLESS TIGERS ARE HARD TO BEAT. LOOK OUT TECH! YOU’RE OUR MEAT.” The yearbook’s caption noted, “Poster Club turns out another masterpiece.” Assuming that the poster was for the Riverside-Tech football game in the fall of 1963, the meat won, 25-13.
See more designs from the Riverside set here.
Sunday, 30 April 2023—Rufus King Generals, Milwaukee, WI
Rufus King signed the United States Constitution as a thirty-two year old delegate from Massachusetts. Rufus King High School in Milwaukee was not named for that Rufus King, but rather his grandson.
The Wisconsin Rufus King was many things, including brigadier general in the Civil War, editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and first superintendent of schools in Milwaukee. He also is said to have organized the first baseball games in Wisconsin, the first of which seems to have taken place on November 30, 1859. It appears that King’s side lost to the side of a Mr. Hathaway, 40-35 at the Wisconsin State Fair Ground. Perhaps Mr. King could have been comforted by some words uttered at that very fairgrounds just two months prior, on September 30:
Some of you will be successful, and such will need but little philosophy to take them home in cheerful spirits; others will be disappointed, and will be in a less happy mood. To such, let it be said, "Lay it not too much to heart." Let them adopt the maxim, "Better luck next time;" and then, by renewed exertion, make that better luck for themselves.
And by the successful, and the unsuccessful, let it be remembered, that while occasions like the present, bring their sober and durable benefits, the exultations and mortifictions of them, are but temporary; that the victor shall soon be the vanquished, if he relax in his exertion; and that the vanquished this year, may be victor the next, in spite of all competition.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! -- how consoling in the depths of affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away." And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.
Those words were spoken by none other than Abraham Lincoln, who would be elected president a year later, and would appoint King to be Minister to the Papal States the year after that. In 1866, a man presented himself to King in Rome, saying that he had identified (in Italy) John Surratt, the last of the conspirators to assassinate Lincoln to be still at-large. King helped orchestrate Surratt’s arrest, although even after being arrested, Surratt managed to jump of a ledge and escape, fleeing until he was finally caught in Egypt.
See more designs from the Rufus King set here.
From the Archive
Rhinelander Hodags, Rhinelander, WI
The hodag is a creature from American folklore, invented by humorist and hoaxster Eugene Shephard and said to inhabit the land around Rhinelander. In the October 28, 1893 issue of the Rhinelander New North, it was written:
The hodag is a terrible brute. It is generally understood among lumber jacks that when an ox is butchered or accidentally killed in the woods that its spirit turns into a hodag, and the hodag thus formed assumes the same color as the ox and he roams about the country formerly occupied by the ox in his summer outings. The hodag assumes the strength of the ox, the ferocity of a bear, the cunning of the fox and the sagacity of a Hindoo snake, and is truly the most to be feared of all the animals that lumber jacks come into contact with.
In his seminal 1939 work Fearsome Critters (in which he likewise discusses the dungavenhooter, the dingmaul, the squonk, and the wampus cat), Henry H. Tryon explains that the hodag does not like lemons, and goes on to say:
The Hodag is fully aware of his upsetting appearance, and is given to frequent fits of bitter weeping. I once had a handful of extremely rare crystallized Hodag tears, but an acquisitive lady friend collected them, believing them to be fine amber. She had them strung into a neck-yoke—and then went and spilled a Tom Collins on herself. Of course the lemon juice dissolved them instantly.
See more designs from the Rhinelander set here.
A Recommendation
I love Brandon Nickerson’s fonts. When he introduces a new one, it’s often free for a bit, and after that ends, everything is very reasonable. Check it out!
I’m off to find out what a brigadier general is. See you next week! Tell your friends!