i am sitting here in my home office. It is late in the evening.

i should be working on my book. You know, the book about my positive experience with women at sea in the Navy, which never progresses at the speed which i plan, damn near always because i can procrastinate with the best of them and allowed to do so because i have reached that glorious age where it is okay. i should be in bed.

i’m sitting here thinking about logos. Logos? Yeh. Logos.

One reason i’m thinking about logos comes from what i’m wearing. i’m sitting here in the house wearing a ball cap. It just came in the mail. i don’t normally wear my ball caps inside anything. My mother and daddy taught me well.

My Vanderbilt ball caps have pretty much run their course, mostly in the sun of the golf course. So i ordered a new one. It came today. Black. Handsome, the ball cap, not me. It’s on my head in my house.

i’m also wearing my Castle Heights tee shirt. It also is pretty new. My old gray one, looked (and eventually smelled) like it came out of the locker room of that old gym basement. But not this tee shirt. This new one is maroon, with Castle Heights in that Gothic  lettering and the Tiger in gold. i have three Heights ball caps like i did with Vandy’s caps, now numbering four.  i have about twenty ball caps with logos and about six polo shirts with logos. i have the Vandy, Heights, Middle Tennessee, and a Lebanon High School ’62 Football caps. i have a bunch of caps from where i’ve been, like Brenneke’s on Poipu Beach in Kauai. There’s also a couple of Navy SEAL golf tournament hats, and a couple from the USGA. And there is one from Pacific Tugboat Services. In fact, the other piece of garb i’m wearing is a faded blue chambray shirt with a Pacific Tugboat logo on the breast.

In my youth, besides hood ornaments and the tail fins on cars of the fifties, i don’t remember too many logos except the inescapable Coca Cola and a couple of others like Goo Goo candy. i’m sure there were more but i don’t remember any impact they made on me.

Back then, those hood ornaments and one other logo influenced me. When i was accepted to Vanderbilt, one of the first things i bought was a decal to stick to the back window of the family’s 1958 Pontiac Star Chief. i was proud of getting into Vanderbilt.

i also had game and practice jerseys from Heights football. One disappeared during one of about 15 moves during and after my Navy career. The practice jersey, a heavy cotton one (#27) became so ratty Maureen made me throw it out. Then there was a Texas Boot softball jersey (which Sarah still wears). Of course, i wore Navy uniforms for nearly forty years, on and off.

i now have a different idea about logos than most folks’ ideas about logos. For starters, i don’t particularly like them. i definitely don’t like logos of the company on products they sell. i don’t own and never will golf apparel with a logo like Titlelist or Taylor Made or Calloway unless it’s a golf bag from which there is no other option.  i wanted to get rid of the logos on my cars. i figure if i am wearing a logo for a product, i am advertising for that product. So they should be paying me…you know like Tiger and Lebron and Matthew McConaughey. i mean i don’t expect to be paid in the millions or even a thousand, but i think a rebate on the products i use would be proper.

An aside: Do you know how hard it is to find a good shirt without a logo on it?

i also will not wear paraphernalia, including ball caps or jerseys of the team i’m rooting for at sports events. i sure as hell won’t wear paraphernalia with somebody else’s name on it, even like Tony Gwynn. i still have some tee shirts with players’ names from the freebie handouts when i had season tickets to ball games, but generally, i am me, not somebody else, no matter how much more famous they are than me. i don’t want to confuse people by making them think i might have another name. And i don’t wear tee shirts except for working out and home tasks (unless of course i have to make a run to Home Depot or Lowes). And if i go to a sports event, i don’t wish to look like a lemming.

i usually wear my logo stuff where it isn’t worn by everybody else. Like out here in the Southwest corner, i wear Castle Heights, Vandy, LHS 1962’s undefeated team, and Middle Tennessee hats. When i go back home, i wear Padre, Navy SEAL, and Pacific Tugboat hats. i mean if i am back home, everybody there knows this is San Diego with Padres, SEALS, and Pacific Tugboat. And back home, everyone knows Vanderbilt and Middle Tennessee and Castle Heights (past tense) and Lebanon High School and UT Chattanooga Mocs.

But tonight, i’m celebrating the joy i have with memories of things i love. So i have my hat on and my CHMA tee shirt and my Pacific Tug shirt. It’s been a good life and my logos help me recall some good times: