Used Shirts...

 I have about three shirts that my parents gave me for Christmas sometime in the late 70s. They are good shirts, durable and besides needing an occasional button or slight mending by my needle and thread capable wife they have served well and I still wear them often. Besides a few other shirt gifts I have received such as the big foot and tuba shirts that everyone feels are so appropriate I get my shirts at the thrift store. There's one particular snap button western shirt I own, bought used that lately I have seen two others like it. 

Someone asked me yesterday the question, "when did you have it done?" I couldn't exactly say so I said, "before COVID," and they understood and it immediately cleared up all confusion. So this western shirt I got before COVID. I was standing on a French Quarter street corner. It was morning of a bright spring day full of possibility and I spotted a guy coming down the street pushing a wheeled clothing rack stocked thick with shirts. I stopped him, you can do that in the great southern cities. Try it in the northern towns and that person might fight you off. 

The guy had taken thrift store snap button shirts and embroidered various designs on each shoulder. I was having modest success playing music and making cigar box guitars at the time so I was on the look out for stage costumes so this fit the bill. I bought one with crawfish on each shoulder. 

I used to like crawfish. On trips to Louisiana it was old cheap food that didn't fill you up too much so you could drink plenty of old cheap beer. The salty, spicy taste also made you want to drink more old cheap beer so it was really a hand and glove kind of thing. They go together. Now days I don't drink beer and for the price crawfish sell for I usually spring for the lobster. I'll just wear my embroidered shirt when I eat it.

I don't know how many shirts with crawfish that street vendor had that day. I have never seen another one. I was walking across the parking lot of a big box building material store and I spotted a shirt of the same pattern on a skinny wizened up little guy. It looked in good condition. These are after all quality shirts. I didn't mention to him I had one just like it or take a photo because my wife has coached me not to talk to other guys about what they are wearing. Not that there is anything wrong with that it's just something that might not sit in the moment right, which is a moment in the parking lot of a big box building materials store. 

The second shirt I saw like mine was in an online video released by New Orleans based folk singer Mark Rubin. I follow him on Facebook and he's a banjo/tuba/punk/bluegrass/Jewish dude. Pro tip: when you follow stuff like this on social media it wrecks the algorithm. When I saw his shirt I headed over to his band camp page and bought his latest release. I guess I should have left a comment, nice shirt. 

Here's the shirt in action.

Once I was at a little BBQ festival and saw a band play. I'd say they played about 75% of the songs a band I was in planned to play at a different festival he next day. I told the singer about this and he said by way of explanation, "Them are good songs." I guess you could say, "Them are good shirts."

That morning in the French Quarter I also bought another shirt but it will be another blog post.