“To be worn with PASSION!”

Epson Expression 10000 XL.

“To be worn with PASSION!”

“This product has been licensed by Ferrari as part of the official fanware range.
To be worn with PASSION!”
Um, sorry; but to me its’s just a tee-shirt.
I started wearing tee-shirts at the mighty Mezz, an alternative to dress shirts with jeans.
Dress seemed to be pretty casual there, especially among us grunt-workers: thems that actually produced the paper — e.g. us paste-up guys.
The only one who wore a suit and tie was the head-honcho, the company prez and maximum leader, “Junior,” son of George Ewing (“YEW-ing”) Sr., publisher, the guy who bought the paper in 1956.
(Senior retired during my tenure.)
I was still kind of a grunt, but an electronic grunt (newsroom, not press-guy)
“What is it you actually do here, Grady?” I’d always be introduced as.
“I don’t know. Anything and everything,” I’d say.
“This paper couldn’t publish without Grady,” they’d say.
“You reconfigured the stockbox from a two-hour job to five minutes? (That’s not possible.) Howdja do that, Grady?”
“You mean that gigantic Canandaigua Academy honor-roll is ready to print? That had to be a lotta work; retyping all those names.”
“That’s not what I did, Boss-Man. I used Word-tricks. If something’s wrong, it’s their mistake.”
“Well, I don’t care how you did it, or understand, but if it’s ready-to-go, let’s print it. We just got it two days ago.”
“You just blew 3/4ths of 2B,” Buchiere (“Bew-SHEER”) would shout at me. “I don’t have to do anything. Wham-bam. Thank you, Grady.”
“I don’t know how he does it,” Buchiere would whisper to a next-door reporter; “but he just saved me hours of work.”
And we were the only ones publishing those page-filling honor-rolls — at least six school-districts; two schools per district.
So I purchased a slew of tee-shirts; some motorbike tee-shirts, and some railroad tee-shirts.
I also purchased tee-shirts from the mighty Curve Gift Shop; one of which is my blue Conrail tee-shirt 44 points out is not the kerreck font.
Well, very close; and it appears to be the right color.
If 44 can distinguish hairline font differences, and point them out, I’m glad. That makes him a Hughes.
But they’re just tee-shirts to me.
A while ago I was in the dressing-room at the physical therapy I was thrown out of, and I was wearing my “Triumph Motorcycles” tee-shirt.
A guy walked in and asked if I had ever owned a Triumph Motorcycle.
“Nope,” I said. “It’s just a tee-shirt.”
At the Canandaigua YMCA a guy once asked about my “Norton” tee-shirt.
“What’s ‘Norton?’” he asked.
“My first motorcycle was a Norton,” I said; “and Norton is a character in the Honeymooners. He was played by Art Carney.
And those were the days of live TV. Once the set started falling apart during a Honeymooners skit, so Gleason and Carney winged it. It was hilarious!”
And so the Ferrari tee-shirt gets added to my vast collection — added to my “Indian Motorcycles” tee-shirt, my John Deere tee-shirt, my BSA tee-shirt, and my various railroad tee-shirts, some of which are wearing out.
My Ferrari tee-shirt is as nice as my Alfa-Romeo (“Alpha-Romeo?”) tee-shirt, since both are soft; and everything else, even though 100% cotton, dries like cardboard.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over two years ago. Best job I ever had.

“Grady” was my nickname at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper — see at right.

“Boss-Man” is Robert Matson, the Executive-Editor of the newspaper. “Buchiere” is Steve Buchiere, a page-editor.

RE: “Some motorbike tee-shirts, and some railroad tee-shirts......” —I ride a motorcycle, and am a railfan.

The “mighty Curve” (Horseshoe Curve), west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. (I am a railfan.) It has a Gift Shop.

“44” (“Agent-44”) is my brother-in-Delaware’s onliest son Tom. He recently graduated college as a computer-engineer. He also is a railfan. (His parents aren’t.)

Horseshoe Curve was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that went bankrupt in about two years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world. Penn-Central was operator number two, followed by Conrail. Conrail was sold and broken up not too long ago, and Horseshoe Curve is now operated by Norfolk Southern Railroad.

“Indian” and “BSA” were motorcycle manufacturers that are now kaput; Indian American and BSA British.

My loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston noisily insists “Alfa-Romeo” is spelled “Alpha-Romeo.”