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, 21 August 2023—Dodge City Red Demons, Dodge City, KS
Dodge City’s nickname is “Red Demons” (according to this, the name came from a mishearing of “D-Men” in the 1920s), but for much of the 1930s, Dodge City was represented by the Pilldilly, a bird character made up of the letters D, C, H, and S (although I can’t say that I see the S. Let me know in the comments if you’ve got it.)
The Pilldilly actually appeared on the 1932 Dodge City basketball uniforms:
See more designs from the Dodge City set here.
Tuesday, 22 August 2023—Garden City Buffaloes, Garden City, KS
I was momentarily amazed at a story that I found in a 1938 issue of the Garden City student newspaper The Sugar Beet entitled “Seniors of 1938 Will Not Graduate—Present Curriculum Insufficient For Graduation According to Law.” The article started off by noting that, “The report from Topeka, saying that the seniors of this year will not be able to graduate, because all the necessary subjects are not in the present curriculum, is a very hard blow to the seniors, but there are advantages to this that should be considered.”
I couldn’t believe this, and checked the date to see how late in the year this had been determined, because if people had been making plans for their life after high school, then it could be very disruptive if—
Oh.
Nothing I hate more than April Fool’s Day!
See more designs from the Garden City set here.
Wednesday, 23 August 2023—Logansport Berries, Logansport, IN
Logansport’s nickname is “Berries” (like loganberries, get it? GET IT?), but they are usually represented by another, recognizable mascot—Felix the Cat. The murky origins of Logansport’s relationship with Felix are detailed on the school’s website, but it is known that Felix is the oldest recognized mascot in the state of Indiana.
In November of 2019, the Mascot Hall of Fame in Whiting, IN held a “Catillion” to celebrate Felix’s 100th birthday. The Mascot Hall of Fame opened in 2018 and has inducted twenty-nine mascots. I commend them for rejecting 2023 nominee Jaxson De Ville, seen here dissing my daughter, Tallulah.
More like Jerxson de Ville.
See more designs from the Logansport set here.
Thursday, 24 August 2023—Peru Tigers, Peru, IN
The International Circus Hall of Fame is located in Peru, once the winter home of several famous circuses. In 1935, Maria Rasputin (daughter of the famous guy) had come to work in a circus.
The March 29, 1935 Indianapolis Times had a bit of fun with the situation:
Maria Rasputin, daughter of Russia’s “mad monk,” entered a cage of tigers, leopards, and pumas today to subdue them with her “hypnotic eye,” but emerged from the steel-latticed ring in despair.
Her occult powers were as useless as her vocabulary against the slinking jungle beasts.
“These animals—they are what you call so dumb-bells,” she exploded, stomping her foot.”
Maria claims that the same hypnotic influence with which her father bewitched the Czarina of Russia is hers to soothe the savage beasts. But the eye failed.
Just weeks later, the eye apparently failed again. The Times reported:
PERU, Ind., April 10—Maria Rasputin, daughter of Russia’s “mad monk” was attacked by a black Himalayan bear being trained for a circus act today and removed to Duke’s Hospital.
Dr. S.D. Malous said the woman trainer, who boated of “controlling” wild animals with hypnotism, was severely bitten and torn by the bear.
But you can’t keep a good wild animal hypnotist down for long. The April 26 Kokomo Tribune announced that she would be coming to Kokomo with the Hagenbeck-Wallace and Forepaugh-Sells Brothers Trained Wild Animal Circus in May:
Fearless, though badly injured by a black bear just before the circus left winter quarters for its road tour, Miss Rasputin claims to have inherited her father’s famous hypnotic eyes which she employs to good advantage in the big cage. She is pictured above with “Tuffy” and “Muffty,” twin leopard babies who’ll be “actors” in Maria Rasputin’s act one of these fine days.
See more designs from the Peru set here.
Friday, 25 August 2023—Crispus Attucks Tigers, Indianapolis, IN
In the early 1920s, the school board in Indianapolis began discussing the opening of an all-black high school. There was immediate pushback toward the project, with a delegation from the Better Indianapolis League (self-described as “a civic organization of progressive colored citizens”) attending a November 28, 1922 school board meeting to present a letter opposing the project. The letter read in part:
The public school system stands as the greatest social factor in the engendering and transmission of sound democratic American ideals and is the hot-house wherein is born the deepest love for American customs and institutions. Rightly has the public school been called the “melting pot of the nation,” for therein is accomplished that fusion of cultures which has made this heterogeneous population the mighty Union that it is.
It has been thrust upon our attention that there is a subtle movement on the part of some of the citizens to have the high school students in this city separated solely on the basis of color and ancestry. We emphasize that no one section of the population can be isolated and segregated without taking from it the advantages of the common culture. No one element of the population can be denied the opportunity to participate freely in the advantages of the highest culture without retardation to the whole group.
It went on to say that school segregation was, “un-christian, anti-social, divisive in spirit, and pernicious in that it would be the means of stirring up discontent, unrest, and friction among a large element of the community.”
Plans went ahead, though, and in 1924, black community leader Archie Greathouse filed suit against the school commissioners. The February 18, 1924 Indianapolis Times reported:
The city plans to erect a new unit for white students for $1,000,000, and a separate colored unit for $150,000.
The colored unit could not provide equal advantages at this sum and the school board has no legal right to expend the citizens’ money in this way, the petition contends.
A flurry of lawsuits failed, though, and so plans to go ahead with Thomas Jefferson High School continued on. The black community wasn’t wild about that name, though, and so they set out looking for another, favoring either that the school be named after African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar or Crispus Attucks, the first man killed in the American Revolution. The March 27, 1926 Indianapolis News noted:
As a result of a general expression from colored school patrons of the city, the board of school commissioners, Tuesday night, will recieve a recommendation from its committee on instruction that the new colored high school be named “the Crispus Attucks High School” instead of the Thomas Jefferson High School, as it was named by the former school board.
Attucks would go on to be a point of pride for the black community in Indianapolis, and one of many reasons was its basketball program. Attucks claimed Indiana state championships in 1955, 1956, 1959, and 2017. In the year before their first championship, the Tigers—led by sophomore and future college standout, NBA champ and MVP, gold medalist, and basketball hall of famer Oscar Robertson—fell just short of making the state tournament, losing to eventual champions Milan High. Milan was the inspiration for the fictional Hickory High in the movie Hoosiers.
See more designs from the Crispus Attucks set here.
Saturday, 26 August 2023—Eminence Eels, Eminence, IN
I started looking in to the town of Eminence, Indiana, but when I was looking at an item in the November 26, 1938 Martinsville, IN Reporter-Times, I became distracted by an item below it about the 1939 World’s Fair in San Francisco entitled, “‘Hot Dogs’ to Step Lively.” The item (datelined San Francisco) read:
“Hot dogs” will have to step lively during the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition here. Officials have decided that all weiners sold during the exposition must be sold within 12 hourse of their manufacture.
All I ever promised was that the schools would be a jumping off point, right? So I decided I needed to jump off to finding out if this hot dog policy had paid any dividends.
As it turns out, that wasn’t the only policy attempting to ensure hot dog excellence at the fair. A March 9, 1939 San Francisco Examiner article mentioned that:
“Get the gardening gloves out of the hot-dog kitchens,” is the slogan for this crusade—which is sponsored by the Fair’s 100 hot-dog chefs. Seems the boys have been ordered to wear white cotton gloves at work, apparently to insure the frankfurters’ absolute purity. This would be alright with the boys if it weren’t for two things—(1) white cotton collects ten times as much dirt as bare hands, and can’t be washed as easily; (2) it’s practically a sleight-of-hand feat to maneuver a red-hot into its bakery jacket when you’re wearing thick gloves. Like pole-vaulting in a straitjacket, the boys say—and it hurts their finer professional feelings to do it.
All those high standards seem to have satisfied somebody—the May 22 Examiner included an item entitled “Jim Bites Dog—Hungry After Feed.”
Of course, Postmaster General James A. Farley is a very large man, but Federal Commissioner George Creel is a little worried about the luncheon he served on Treasure Island yesterday.
It didn’t seem to satisfy Farley.
It was a sumptious luncheon—but—
Not long afterward, on the way back from the California Coliseum, where Farley had been given a ten-gallon hat by Carol Jean Juddleston, the postmaster-general spied a hot dog stand and halted the car.
While all those who had surfeited themselves on the luncheon looked on with amazement, Big Jim Farley calmly tucked away a hot dog and a bottle of milk.
And it wasn’t just people! From the March 13 Examiner:
A plant that eats hot dogs…?
It’s at the California State Floriculture Building at the Exposition, and if you don’t believe it you can go over, as Miss Alma Dean Ericksen of Berkeley did yesterday, and see for yourself.
The plant is the darlingtonia, which normally abides in the swamps of northern California and Oregon and lives on insects. In lieu of insects, it will eat hot dogs and hamburger, if they are broken into small, succulent bits.
See more designs from the Eminence set here.
Sunday, 27 August 2023—Muncie Central Bearcats, Muncie, IN
The February 17, 1880 Muncie Morning News pointed out that, “The habit of playing ‘hookey’ is becoming entirely too prevalent among some of the small students of the Muncie High school.” I hope they got such a newsworthy problem under control.
See more designs from the Muncie Central set here.
See you next week! Tell your friends!