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, 28 August 2023—Frankfort Hot Dogs, Frankfort, IN
Legendary North Carolina State basketball coach Everett Case—sometimes credited with lighting the spark of college basektball in the south—led the Frankfort Hot Dogs to four Indiana state championships.
Case was born and raised in Anderson, Indiana, and his hometown Anderson Daily Bulletin celebrated Frankfort’s first title in a March 23, 1925 article entitled “Everett Case is Winner.” It noted its pride in Case, of whom it said, “He loved basektball, read it, dreamed it, slept it, and ate it.”
Anderson has at least one cause for rejoicing as the annual high school basketball season in Indiana draws to a close—Frankfort, coached by Everett Case, an Anderson boy, won the state championship.
Although Frankfort has Everett Case as its coach, Anderson claims him as its fellow townsman. Case is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Case, of 1621 West Fourteenth Street.
When the Hot Dogs captured the title in 1929, The Times of Northwest Indiana focused on Frankfort’s celebration of the win, reporting, “City Forgets Business to Honor Team.”
Despite the fact that Frankfort is celebrating its second state championship victory within the brief space of four years, the citizens of “The City Substantial” are making just as much whoopee today as if the town had never received the honor—For Indiana takes its basketball seriously.
School classes and business in Frankfort are forgotten today, while its citizenry stands about the public square discussing the highlights of the last week-end tourament and planning for next year.
In 1936, the scene was apparently different, with the March 29 Evansville Courier and Press reporting, “Champs Show No Elation in Lop-Sided Win.”
Frankfort’s Hot Dogs accepted the winning of the state high school basketball championship tonight in the same matter-of-fact manner with which they conquered Anderson and Central of Ft. Wayne.
There was none of the usual back-slapping and shotus of joy in the Frankfort dressing room.
The boys, led by Ralph Montgomery, dashed down the ramp, packed their bags and were on their way home within a few minutes.
From the lack of noise and celebration, a casual visitor would have thought the new state champs had just won an easy early-season game.
But the joy was recaptured in time for the Hot Dogs’ 1939 win, as on March 26 the Courier and Press noted that “‘Yahoo’ is Hot Dogs ‘Win Shout.'“
“Yahoo…yahoo…yaaaahooooo,” they yelled at the top of their voices. “We did it…we did it…I told you we would. Yahoo…yahoo.”
They barged into the dressing room like they were shot out of guns. They ripped off their clothes, ducked into the showers for an instant each and shouted to each other, “Hurry up, let’s go home and tear the town down.”
They certainly had enough pep and “vinegar” in them to do just about anything they pleased.
See more designs from the Frankfort set here.
Tuesday, 29 August 2023—Milan High School, Milan, IN
Milan’s 1954 state championship basketball team was the inspiration for the movie Hoosiers, winning the title with a last second basket by Bobby Plump. Plump went on to play basketball for Butler University, and Butler coach Tony Hinkle set him up with a job after he graduated.
That job was at the Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Plump would work a regular job during the day, but his chief role was to play on the Bartlesville Phillips 66ers of the National Industrial Basketball League. The Industrial League was a hotly contested nationwide amateur league whose winner qualified to play in the Olympic Trial playoffs—members of the 66ers represented the United States in 1948 and 1956. During the 1951-52 season, the league included a team named the Los Angeles Fibber McGee & Mollys.
In 1960, Plump found himself on a 66ers team that faced the Wichita Vickers (of Vickers Petroleum) for the NIBL championship and chance to play for a spot on the Olympic team. In a game where, as the March 13, 1950 Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise breathlessly reported, “More chills and thrills were packed into the 53 minutes of rapid-paced action than a dozen Alfred Hitchcock plays could produce,” Plump contributed eight points in a 117-115 win. Unfortunately for the 66ers (but perhaps fortunately for the United States), they were defeated in the Olympic Trials by a team of college all-stars including Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, and Jerry Lucas. 66er Burdette Haldorson, who had poured in 31 points in the winning effort against Wichita, did make the team and scored one point in the game where the Americans captured the gold medal.
See more designs from the Milan set here.
Wednesday, 30 August 2023—Rising Sun Shiners, Rising Sun, IN
Rising Sun is the setting for the hit 1890 play Blue Jeans, which was made into an acclaimed silent film in 1917. Its most famous scene was a suspenseful one in a sawmill:
When looking for information on “Blue Jeans,” I came across this sad item from the November 26, 1890 Evening World:
Little Gracie Sherwood, the “cute” child, who is so prettily mamma’d by Miss Jennie Yeamans in “Blue Jeans,” at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, is the daughter of Asa R. Waterman, the Brooklyn manager who was recently tried for murder. Gracie has been living with her mother, who goes by the name Mrs. Sherwood, but the lady has been very ill, and Manager Rosenquest has been obliged to hire a trained nurse to look after her
Gracie in her part in “Blue Jeans” has to ask where her papa is. The story of her own little life is as intricate as the web woven by Mr. Arthur. She often asks the same question when she is not upon the stage.
The Sun had more bad news on the same day:
Florence Sherwood, an actress by profession, and the wife of Asa R. Waterman, who shot Peter Doran in Williamsburg last spring, was received as an insane patient at Bellevue Hospital yesterday afternoon. She had been living in a furnished room at 251 West Fourteenth Street with her five-year-old daughter Grace, who plays the child of the hero and heroine in “Blue Jeans” at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. Three weeks ago last Sunday night the mother entertained friends and on the next day she complained of a headache. Delirium developed, but Mrs. Waterman did not become violent until last Sunday. Then she attempted to hammer her head with a bottle of vichy water and other articles that were in the room. Her father, who lives in Philadelphia, was telegraphed for, and upon his arrival yesterday morning it was decided to remove her to Bellevue.
The April 21, 1890 New York Times had reported on the source of the trouble:
The story of the shooting as told by these people agrees substantially with the account already published. Waterman and Mrs. Doran were on their way from the theatre, of which Waterman is the manager, when they were met in front of Jospeh Fallert’s saloon by the woman’s enraged husband. Instead of getting out of Doran’s way, Waterman stood his ground and declared that the woman should choose who should go home with her. She immediately said to Waterman, “Why, with you, of course!” Thereupon Doran struck his wife’s escort twice. The blows were not sufficiently forcible to leave any mark, but Waterman, although a special officer of the police, wearing a shield, and therefore competent to arrest his assailant, deliberately drew a revolver and shot him through the heart.
Waterman was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned by the Governor of New York in 1897.
See more designs from the Rising Sun set here.
Thursday, 31 August 2023—Rochester Zebras, Rochester, IN
The November 29, 1928 Rushville Republican asked:
Won’t somebody give the Rochester High School basketball team a name?
Some time ago pupils and school officials decided to abandon the time-honored sobriquet of “Zebras” and since that time the proposition has been to find a new title. The name “Tarzans” was suggested by a Rochester High School student, but wasn’t acted upon as yet. Sport writers are now calling the former Zebras “The Nameless Team.”
I guess they never came up with anything better.
See more designs from the Rochester set here.
Friday, 1 September 2023—Shortridge Blue Devils, Indianapolis, IN
On September 20, 1903, Shortridge’s football team took on Wabash College in what the Indianapolis Star perhaps hyperbolically called “one of the most bitterly fought contests ever witnessed on the college grounds.” With Wabash leading 12-0, Shortridge’s captain pulled his team off the field when Wabash lined up with Samuel Gordon, a black man, in the game. The Star reported that, “Gordon, the colored student, took the matter good naturedly, and said he was sorry the game had to be called ‘on account of darkness.’” Which sucks.
On September 24, Shortridge’s student paper, the Daily Echo, reported on a meeting where a faculty member expressed disapproval (although he “didn’t blame anyone for the misconduct of the team.”) The team’s captain, “expressed his profound regret that his action had caused such widespread comment.”
On the next day, the Echo ran an editorial entitled “Sportsmanship in Shortridge.” It concluded thusly:
All this recital has not yet made clear where we may find consolation. It lies, we believe, only in the consciousness that in some particulars we were wrong (and are willing to rectify that wrong.) This acknowledgement we make with candor. We know, as we have never known before, that the Shortridge spirit pleads for high, noble sportsmanlike play. Anything adverse to this—in our rivals or in ourselves—we cordially, but charitably, condemn.
The school, we believe, is now unanimous in its desire to right all wrongs. It has not approved of the action of the team, but it is not going to withdraw its support. Captain Clark has come out in a manly way and admitted that he is wrong. There is no crying or whimpering; no carping or wheedling. We have apologized to President Kane, of Wabash College, and we have all joined hands for Shortridge and for the Shortridge team. The incident is closed, but the incident has taught us a timely lesson.
Of course the incident wasn’t exactly closed for Gordon, who continued to face the same issues all year long, even resigning from the team at one point. He did get to play the entire game on a Thanksgiving-day drubbing at the hands of Notre Dame, and he can be seen in the box score from that day’s Indianapolis Journal.
NOTE: It is not without pleasure that I note the use of a semicolon in the Daily Echo, a publication that would in the future be edited by Kurt Vonnegut, famous expressor of an opinion about semicolon use that is hot garbage.
See more designs from the Shortridge set here.
Saturday, 2 September 2023—Overbrook Panthers,Philadelphia, PA
The 1928 Overbrook yearbook includes a blurb about the school’s Esperanto club:
For the purpose of studying Esparanto, the Esperanto Club was organized in the fall of 1926, under the sponsorship of Mr. Dubin. Esperanto is the international auxiliary language which is intended to serve as a communication between nations in diplomacy, in commerce, in literature and science, and in radio broadcasting. The members find it very enjoyable.
Mr. Dubin, as it turns out, was Joseph W. Dubin, president of the Philadelphia Esperanto Society. Dubin was a longtime, passionate advocate of Esperanto, and even wrote a book about it in 1945, called The Green Star. (You can find it here, but I haven’t read it, so don’t blame me if it advocates anything nutty….)
The September 1926 issue of Amerika Esperantisto, even gives Dubin’s work at Overbrook a shoutout, noting, “At the Overbrook High School, Professor J.W. Dubin is teaching a large class in Esperanto.” That item is followed a few pages later by a list called, “TWENTY REASONS FOR THE PROGRESS OF ESPERANTO AND FOR BELIEVE IN ITS EVENTUAL TRIUMPH.” I didn’t have to keep all-caps on that, but it seemed like it really, really wanted it.
Also, you might guess that Will Smith went to West Philadelphia High School, but you’d be wrong—he was an Overbrook grad. So was Wilt Chamberlain.
See more designs from the Overbrook set here.
Sunday, 3 September Olney Trojans, Philadelphia, PA
Upon Olney’s opening in 1931, two teachers—Everett Glenn and Victor Fritz—started the Olney High School Aero Club. According to the June 21, 1931 Philadelphia Inquirer:
After several months’ instruction in the theory and technique of aviation Mr. Glenn took fifteen members of the Aero Club to the Flying Dutchman Airport, Somerton, and personally made flights with each one. All of them have been enthusiastic over flying ever since.
“Actual flights,” said Mr. Glenn “give these students something on which to focus their interest. They are at the impressionable age and this is a feature in their lives that does not fall to the lot of the average boy or girl in school.”
As for Glenn, the Inquirer article mentions that he learned to fly from Ernest Buehl. Buehl was an aviation pioneer who had a life you could write a book about. Check out the singature of the chairman on his pilot’s license:
See more designs from the Olney set here.
See you next week! Tell your friends!