The "Threads With Meaning" Story

It was an ordinary day. Friday! Cleaning day, laundry day, grocery shopping day! Very seldom do I work on Friday anymore. That is, real work! No, no, I better not say it that way. I mean work that I get paid for, since cleaning the house, doing the laundry and shopping are more energy consuming than watching a press run paper through it or standing in front of a bench putting canvas and paper pictures in a frame. Since my wife works, I do the housework weekly. I like to get up early and do the upstairs bathroom before she gets out of bed to take her shower, that way I can have the entire second floor finished by 9:00 AM. Then, after her shower I can put the wash in the machine and get ready to start the first floor. Eventually I fit the shopping into the schedule and still get home in time for "The Price is Right." Afternoon is devoted to dusting, finishing the laundry and putting it back in the drawers and closets. Organization is the name of the game and that's one thing I'm good at. I'm really better at organizing than cleaning, washing and shopping. Well, while putting the wash away today I decided to get my short-sleeve shirts out of the bottom drawers and place them in the tops drawers in preparation for the coming season. Looked at each one and it brought back many fond memories. Oh yeah, I bought that shirt while sailing on the "Tiami" in Barbados and that shirt I got when I went for breakfast in Red Hook on St. Thomas. All of my shirts have meaning to me. Felt like I was taking a trip around the world just organizing my shirts. The photos below will show you some of the shirts I have collected over the years and the meaning they have for me. Hope you enjoy the explanations as much as I enjoyed buying them and wearing them. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

These three shirts are some of my oldest. Date back to the late '80s when my son played baseball for Villanova University. The #20 sweatshirt is torn around the top and the sleeves are ragged, but I still wear it all the time. The blue shirt was sold for a fundraiser and the old faded orange t-shirt was from a Major League Baseball sponsored summer team that he played for in Quakertown, PA.
Two of these sports related shirts I got when my son-in-law's football team played in the annual "Battle for the Cure" game in Maryland. He started the game to raise money for Juvenile Diabetes, to help benefit his daughter, my granddaughter, Courtney .
Car shirts are always great for guys and I have more than a dozen Vette shirts that I got when I entered shows, but my most favorite I found in Wildwood, NJ. It features a pix of my first car, a '53 Henry J.
These are all from St. Martin. Top right I bought at a store in the airport, bottom two came from the open air market in Marigot and the blue one from Orient Beach.
Some of the more colorful shirts I have come from (top) St. Martin and (bottom) Sint Maarten
From the islands of: (top) Antigua, (middle) Anguilla, and (bottom) Turks and Caicos
Colorful shirt on top is from a pub in St. Thomas while the one on the bottom I bought from the crew of the catamaran Tiami.
Some of the "Hawaiian" shirts that I have purchased on various islands over the last 10 or so years.
My latest which I got when I had an operation for trigger finger on my hand.