For 13 days straight we celebrated a different treasure from my — chooses adjective carefully — “consequential” T-shirt collection.
But it’s still 11 days before Christmas, not to mention 17 until the calendar turns over, which means over 400 hours left in our present fast where — in a fit of hubris mixed with a spasm of poor decision-making — I pledged to Karry that I could make it the rest of 2025 without buying another t-shirt.
Or what the supportive members of my family have dubbed the “You’ll Never Make It” Tour.
As the supportive members of my family are quick to attest, the act of my setting out to accomplish something and actually accomplishing it … is no small accomplishment.
Outside of the bags of frozen Reese’s Cups I deplete on a regular and consistent basis (which is EXACTLY what eight-year-old Pete imagined adulthood looking like), my track record for finishing tasks within specified parameters is what the historians would call ‘pock-marked.’
Since the odds of future goal-setting-and-accomplishing suggest betting the Under, we thought it appropriate to seize this rare ‘mission-accomplished’ vantage point for a reflective moment, much like we do in the sugar high afterglow following double-digit Reese’s consumption.
I think it’s fair to say alchemizing my t-shirt affection through a retrospective lens has proven successful, at least in the recent modest sample size, in curbing my appetites for acquisition.
So my torso and I find ourselves at a Crossroads.
A.) Keep the retrospective going
(B.) Declare myself ‘cured’ and — for the next 17 days — trust in my newfound ability to resist the algorithms massing at the gates of my feeds hurling temptations like so many flaming projectiles launched from medieval trebuchets
(C.) Give in and hit ‘launch’ on my 2026 T-shirt Registry, which is almost-but-not-quite-as-full as my closet
(D.) Empty a bag of frozen Reese’s trees while we decide
(E.) Both A & D, with possibly a C chaser.
When you put it like that, is it even a question?
Gauntlet thrown.
By which we mean Japanese cat tribal warrior t-shirt added to the ’26 registry, bitches.
Can we keep the streak going?
Can we perpetuate the momentum?
Can we make it to ’26?
What will run out first … my will power in the face of great odds? The number of clean t-shirts in my closet? The Reese’s currently in my freezer?
As we step out in faith into uncharted territory towards an unexplored map with unknown temptation and peril waiting at every turn, we look — as all great explorers do — to Ernest Shackleton, famed leader of three expeditions to the Antarctic, for inspiration.
My friend Stephen designed this badass logo for his badass wife Sam’s badass business, whose mission is to “create the coolest, space-themed, design objects for cat lovers.”
Mission accomplished.
Proceeds from their refined, feline designs fund cat rescue and advocacy projects for community cats and their caregivers, which me and Viktor the Cat (my sensei) agree is righteous.
I could pick this logo as Stephen’s out of a police lineup. He’s had his own singular sinister aesthetic since I met him when I was a clueless intern in the mid-90’s. I owe my professional career to Stephen’s brilliance.
Check ‘em out at catsa.co. Their merch is next level and their wearables so soft they’ll make your torso purr.
Type “cathedral” into my brain’s large language model, you’ll get an image of 261 Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach.
This t-shirt unlocks so much for me … beginning and ending with the Pilgrimage.
Whenever work or friends would take me to San Francisco, I’d stay at the Hotel Rex on Sutter, which was part of Chip Conley’s Joie de Vivre collection of boutique hotels, each one inspired by a different magazine. The Rex was inspired by the New Yorker, and was designed to evoke San Fran’s literary salons of the 1920s and 30s.
Their lounge was The Library, all cushy chairs, reading lamps and the magical musty smell of old books (swoon).
Its atmosphere was cozily curated for unburdening … conducive to liberating one’s hands to alternate between a good book, a pen and paper, and a half-full glass of the house red.
Make a left exiting the hotel, I’d walk the few blocks down to Bush, hang a left and climb its hill to the iconic Dragon’s Gate.
From there take a savoring stroll through North America’s oldest and largest Chinatown, a world unto itself.
Keep walkin’ until I find North Beach. Make the right, slowing to a reverent saunter through Jack Kerouac Alley, pausing to bow and whisper read his pavement words etched in its center, “The air was soft the stars so fine the promise of every cobbled alley so great.”
And then, proof that alley promises come true: City Lights — Ferlinghetti’s fierce, tender, defiantly flickering eternal flame of a bookstore.
Every single second I’ve spent walking amongst its stacks has been a replenishing.
The sound of one’s shoes creaking its old wooden floors while in slow-browse reverie? A poetry all its own.
I love reading the staff’s hand-written recommendations slash love letters adorning the shelves as much as I do the books they hype.
The pleasure of stumbling upon treasure you didn’t even know to look for.
Going upstairs to the poetry room, where Ferlinghetti’s rocker — the ‘poet’s chair’ — still sits by the window in open invitation.
Harvesting an armful of sustenance for the suitcase home.
Walking back to the Rex drunk on Kerouac’s soft air and fine stars, clutching my brown paper bag tightly as I imagine he did his.
In the years when we were legally adults, but intellectually and emotionally still ‘ripening,’ we cultivated what some of us consider an ‘abiding affection’ for Old Crow, while others of us, if they are feeling euphemistically generous, would acknowledge under oath as a ‘relationship.’
All I know is that during the dark ‘post-college-graduation-scuffling-by-on-part-time-jobs-with-no-real-prospects’ years, Old Crow’s firm place on the bottom shelf was an accessible and fortifying presence.
And ever since, we have reverently and dutifully honored Dr. James Crow for inventing the sour mash process.
There is a loose thread of American history (that we choose not to tug terribly hard at) that believes that Old Crow was indirectly responsible for winning the Civil War.
It was well-known that Ulysses S. Grant fancied himself a good tipple now and again. It was believed that Old Crow was a preferred part of his, um, medicinal regimen.
A story has sloshed around that critics of the general once complained about his drinking to Lincoln. To which the 16th president purportedly replied, “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
We’ll drink to that.
Because sometimes it’s more about good memories than good memory.
Also, as anyone who has ever been brave, desperate, or just (like us) poor and dumb enough to send Old Crow down one’s gullet knows … it’s out for vengeance.
In his book “The Social History of Bourbon,” author Gerald Carson relates a tale that, during the Northern Army’s siege of Vicksburg, Grant enjoyed generous nightly nightcaps of Old Crow.
Served neat, of course. (autonomic sympathetic body shudder goes here)
And not to draw a parallel between the Union Army’s 47 days waiting out surrender and us waiting out the last of our adolescence enjoying Red-Hot-doused frozen taquitos from the microwave … but I find it hard not to wax nostalgic when it comes to Old Crow.
Its vague place in our country’s history.
Its humble yet consistent place on the bottom shelf.
Its proud place on this author’s torso.
And its hallowed place keeping us company while we figured — and continue to figure — our shit out.
Joe Mugnaini’s brilliant cover for the first edition of Ray Bradbury’s incendiary novel.
The book holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons, on top of its timeless cautionary tale.
My daughter and I read it aloud together across many Saturday coffee-shop mornings when she was a young teenager, which was my first re-read of it in a good 20 years or so. What a wonderful way to be reacquainted.
And during our re-reading, I was profoundly moved by a passage late in the book when Montag, on the run, encounters a group of kindred spirits living in the woods on the outskirts of town. And around a campfire, he remembers his grandfather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to this passage since.
Its still glowing embers warm me as much as the campfire that coaxed the words from Bradbury’s typewriter.
It’s not only been medicine to my heart, but I’ve shared Bradbury’s beautiful words with friends and kindred spirits seeking warmth in the darkness of their own loss.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the (person) who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
Always makes me think of the gardeners I’ve known in my life.
Spill a little mustard on your shirt for Franktuary, which sunsetted its brick and mortar a few years back, but still operates a food truck here and there I hear.
Reverently prepared hot dogs.
Peter and I used to pilgrimage to their Lawrenceville location for boys day out Saturday lunches.
And like the great philosophers of antiquity, we’d spend the purgatory between our ordering and our munching engaging in spirited, hangry debates over the universe’s cosmic questions.
Does ketchup belong on a hot dog?
Answer: as you will consistently find across both your meat-eating eastern and western religions, the creator intended ketchup for hamburgers, mustard for hot dogs.
Are Franktuary’s fresh cut fries with garlic aioli better than Shorty’s fries with gravy?
Answer: What, in life, is truly objective? Just as Plato and Kant tussled with that hot potato across centuries … Peter and I staged “The Great Potato Debate” across many a table over the years. He was unequivocally Team Frankturary. Me? I was polytheistic on the matter. For the ultimate answer … ask God next time you see her.
Without irony, I believe that you can test the mettle of a good cathedral by the questions and conversations it engenders.
Once, while Peter and I were debating metaphysics, Heidegger, and the nature of being — by which I mean whether honey mustard was a salad dressing (Peter) or a condiment (me) — a father and young son, both dressed in Pirates jerseys, sat down at a booth across from us.
No sooner had they taken their seats when the son, maybe eight or nine, asked his Dad, “Who’s your favorite baseball player of all time?”
Which settled the question of God’s existence for me once and for all.
Couple weeks ago we’re in the kitchen when Karry asks me about a charge on our credit card that looked suspicious.
Read aloud the name of a company she didn’t recognize.
“No, that’s me,” I said.
Was kinda’ hoping that would end her curiosity.
Had the opposite effect … like most of my good intentions.
“What did you buy?” she asked.
“It’s … a surprise.”
As an aside … that’s pretty good for me as far as comebacks under pressure go.
But it was late October. She knows I’m not that proactive with my holiday shopping.
“What did you buy?” she repeated.
“A t-shirt,” I confessed.
She: You bought a $35 t-shirt?
While it might seem like a yes or no question, the answer … was nuanced.
Me: No, I bought a $28 t-shirt.
She: (silence)
Me: Seven bucks for shipping.
Karry tends not to put on her cheaters to appreciate nuance.
For context, I love t-shirts.
My family prefers the word ‘addiction.’
It’s my only one.
Yep, T-shirts and postcards.
And, um, books.
T-shirts are among the reasons I don’t get tattoos.
I’m too easily seduced.
I fall in love too frequently … and fleetingly.
I mean, just when you see a design of a badass skull made up of tiny cats ($28 + $7 shipping), your feed serves up a silhouette of a man’s arm coming into frame to fist-bump a similarly silhouetted cat who looks like one of the cats who live in your house (Viktor).
The family staged an intervention a few years ago.
Unbeknownst to me, they harvested a bunch of t-shirts from my closet and had them made into a blanket … like parents do when their kids leave for college.
They were sneaky. Did it under the guise of my birthday and presented it as a ‘gift,’ … which forced me to suppress my immediate reaction, which was along the lines of, “You did … what ???!!!”
Some (most) of the shirts were still in regular rotation … including one of my all-time favorites: the orange GI Joe “Man of Action (With Lifelike Hair)” number that I found in a comic book store in Houston, Texas many years ago.
Joe’s head on the t-shirt had the same life-like hair as the action figure doll I had in the 70’s.
Glorious.
Over the years many wide-eyed smiles and fist-bumps from kindred spirits, most (all) middle-aged men, most (all) of whom proceeded to lose their sh*t when I pointed out that Joe’s coiffe was, in fact, life-like.
At night, when I am under the blanket, I can sometimes hear Joe softly sobbing.
Since the thoughtful-birthday-gift-slash-intrusive-intervention (still stings), we’ve operated under an uneasy detente.
For any new t-shirt I bring into the collection, I must remove one from my closet.
So I felt cornered when Karry called me out in the kitchen on my latest acquisition.
“It’ll be my last one of the year,” I blurted.
She: Yeah, right.
Me: No, seriously, last one of the year.
She: (silence)
Me: It’s only, like, two months. I can make it.
She: (silence)
While acknowledging that historical precedent would suggest, shall we say, an uphill climb, I pointed out that a little encouragement would, you know, go a long way.
She: You’ll never make it.
__
Couple weeks later, I’m downstairs when I hear yelling from the laundry room.
“Wait, did you get another t-shirt?”
While it seems like a yes or no question, the answer was … nuanced.
At the storytelling thing in the city I went to the night before, Jacob the producer gave me the t-shirt I won a couple months ago. They were out at the time.
I hadn’t bought it, so therefore had not violated the embargo.
I assured her that my t-shirt fast was still holding strong.
Then she did the thing she does sometimes … where she held her gaze a couple extra seconds without saying a word … letting me know she’ll be keeping an eye on me … until midnight strikes on Dec. 31.
Which I received as, you know, encouragement.
Recognizing that I still have about four weeks to go in my fast — which, let’s be honest here, will be brutal for the holiday algorithms ramping up to tempt me at every turn — I thought it’d be healthy to channel my energies away from my feeds and towards counting my blessings, by which I mean the treasures hanging in my closet.
Which history suggests are only ever a stealthy intervention away from being permanently removed from circulation.
So I’m here today to officially launch the TWELVE DAYS OF T-SHIRTS … a celebratory ‘greatest hits’ retrospective befitting, you know, a man of action with life-like hair.
The ones that bring me joy.
The ones that keep me in Cozy Mode as I clumsily navigate the world around me.
The ones that I impulse bought in spasms of poor decision-making somewhere between my second and third Moscow Mules.
Each one with its own story to tell.
Full disclosure: knowing that the odds of my following through to 12 are only marginally better than my resisting t-shirt temptation for the next four weeks … I will be receiving any and all feedback (including silence) as encouragement.
to a quick hot shower after running in the cold and wet at the track after sunset
to air-frying the steak quesadilla Peter made last night and set aside for me … and savoring it standing up in the kitchen
to sailing down Green Tree hill and through the tunnels to receive a weathered city that only glistens at night
to having a pick of parking spots next to the park where people are still pickleballing under the lights
to the luminous marquis of the old Garden Theater standing as proud reminder to never let our past define our possibility
to walking into Alphabet City and finding it full, just as the mighty Alexis was preambling the evening’s program
to grabbing the last seat at the bar, left open because it couldn’t see the stage … but it could see the drummer, which is exactly what you came to see
to a septet breaking into Perdido breaking like a fresh egg over your week’s bowl, seeping down and through all the way to the bottom
to the drummer excusing everyone but the piano, bass and guitar, leaving them to Nat King Cole the shit outta’ Stompin’ at the Savoy, painting life so beautiful in black and white
to the trombone player’s tone on I Can’t Get Started, as full and warm as the bourbon in my second Soothsayer
to the piano player pouring himself Body and Soul, exploring till he found that chord he knew was in there, causing the sax player bowing her head to smile around her mouthpiece … and look up and over to him and nod
to the in-betweens of the bandleader preaching sermons on St. Norman Granz and Jazz at the Philharmonic
to listening with an irrepressible smile of my own to 90 minutes of combinations, educations and improvisations orchestrated as neatly as a bento box, leaving me not full just satisfied
to driving back home in reverie in no great hurry
to pulling in the driveway pushing 9:30 and finding the outside light on and Peter shooting hoops
to stepping into a rebound and dishing his layup
to settling into old familiar rhythms
to knowing it’s in when it leaves your hand
to feeding him in stride and him splashing one after another after another
to seeing your November breath while staying out way past dark on a school night
to calling it, but not before each ending on a make
Left the house yesterday morning to meet my sister for coffee.
There are few more lovely reasons to leave the house on a Saturday morning.
Figured I’d swing by the post office first to pick up some stamps.
Planned to write my daughter her weekly postcard after having coffee with my big sister.
No line when I got inside.
Saw Maria standing behind the counter … which made me smile.
Maria’s worked at the post office for 28 years, if I remember correctly.
She told me last time I picked up a lasagna from her.
Not at the post office.
At her tender restaurant A la Maria’s, on LeMoyne, where she spends her weekday evenings … lovingly making her Mom’s old Italian recipes.
Maria’s place holds a special place in my heart.
When Karry and I got married and moved into the World’s Tiniest Apartment in East Washington, Maria’s mother ran a restaurant out of the basement of her home a couple blocks from us.
In our early Kraft-Mac-and-Cheese-Can-of-Peas-for-Dinner days, Paesano’s was our one monthly splurge.
Saturday night.
If the weather was nice we’d walk.
It was BYOB so we made a ritual of picking up a $10 bottle of wine.
Made sure we were in our seats by 7 o’clock, so we could watch X-Files re-runs on the big TV that hung in the dining area …
… while slow savoring food made with love from an Italian mother’s kitchen.
We’d take our time walking our full bellies back home — the next day’s leftover lunch in my left hand, Karry’s hand in my right.
Everything my Saturday night could ever want back then.
Maria’s lasagna is perfection.
Architectural is the best way to describe it.
Sharp corners. Rectilinear. Towering.
Don’t know how she does it.
Every lasagna we’ve ever made at home comes out of the pan (deliciously) gloopy.
Maria’s could serve as a tornado shelter.
Comes with about a 1/2 inch of standing red sauce pooling in the bottom of the to go container.
Every time I get home and crack open the styrofoam box, Pavarotti sings ‘La donna è mobile’ in my head.
Comes with two thin slices of Italian bread, essential sponges for sopping up every last drop from the plate when you’ve sadly run out of lasagna.
When I put my sopped-clean-post-lasagna plate in the dish washer, the other dishes are like, “I think you meant to put this back in the cabinet.”
So it should come as no surprise how it made me smile to see Maria behind the counter at the post office yesterday morning.
“Miss Maria,” I greeted.
“Mr. Riddell.”
“Postcard stamps?” I asked.
“Cleaned out. Election folks bought ‘em all up.”
“Awwww. Really?”
Asked her when they might get more in. She said they’re on order, from Kansas.
“They send them regular mail … so, who knows?”
Coming from a post office person, the “Who knows?” struck me as funny.
She said I could try the McMurray store. They have everything there.
I thanked her for letting me know, and exhaled defeatedly, as I didn’t have the time nor inclination for a special trip.
Was just about to say out loud that my visit wasn’t in vain, though, since I got to see her …
… when Maria interjected.
“Otherwise, you’d have to go two busses and some grapes.”
“Uh …. I’m sorry, what?”
“To make up the 61 cents,” she said.
Pre-caffeinated, I wasn’t following at all.
She pulls out her drawer, takes out a couple packs of stamps.
Starts to do math.
Explains the busses are 28 cents …
“So two of those …. plus a five cent stamp,” she says, holding up a pack of grape stamps.
“So you’d need a lot of stamps,” she chuckled.
“Wait …,” I said. “Postcard stamps are 61 cents?”
“Yep. Regular stamps are 78 cents, post cards are 61.”
I had no idea.
In my mind I thought postcard stamps were like 19 cents.
Sixty-one cents … for such little real estate.
I felt dumb … for having hundreds of post cards at home.
She started to put the booklets back in her drawer, when I interjected.
“I’ll take the busses and grapes,” I said.
“Oh, you want to do that?” she asked.
“Just to get me through today,” I said.
What I meant was that I’d just take a booklet of each as an interim solution.
“Oh, so you just want enough for one?” she asked.
I didn’t think you could do that.
I smiled at the smile on her face as I watched her tearing off a postcard’s worth of individual stamps from their booklets.
“I guess I’m going to have to write smaller,” I said out loud.
She broke apart the three I needed, laid them loose on the counter.
Then an idea popped into her head.
“Here’s what you do ….”
I watched her pick up a bus, peel it off, and carefully lay it across the other bus.
Wasn’t sure what she was doing … maybe just consolidating onto one piece rather than sending me out with three loose stamps?
Then she peeled the grape and surgically laid it across the second bus.
“There …. That’s what you do,” she said.
Proudly.
“Leaves you more room to write,” she said.
Oh.
“So you can lay them across each other like that on the post card?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said. “Only the ‘USA’ needs to be showing.”
And I giggled out loud … like a five-year-old who’d just seen an adult perform magic.
You should see what she does with a lasagna, I’m tellin’ ya.
In the town where I live, there’s a person who will not only let a clueless, pre-caffeinated little brother cobble together a postcard’s worth of stamps … but will take the time to bunch ‘em as tight as the law allows … so he has as much room as possible to write to his daughter about how much he misses her.
__
And after just the loveliest visit with my big sister …
… I took out my favorite pen …
… and the postcard I’d plucked special from my massive, impractical inventory …
… took my time writing small and neat …
… doing my best to make every word count …
… with all the reverence I could muster …
… as I imagined a mother might …
… writing down her favorite recipes for posterity.
I don’t remember if it fell across a couple years, or just one.
Don’t remember exactly how old we were. Early 20’s I think.
Don’t remember how often, or how many instances of it there were.
I just know that when Bill would drop Taco Night on the calendar …
… some of us would fast like it was Ramadan.
Mrs. Sochko makin’ tacos.
I remember the first time I attended … popping into the kitchen to say hello and thank you, and noticing she was pan frying the tortillas.
In our house we just opened the box and took the shells out of the plastic bag.
I remember thinking, “What is this sorcery?”
I can’t even remember who all would show up.
Just that there was always a table-full: Bill, his older brother Danny, and Mr. Sochko in their assigned seats, and the rest of us filling in the others.
Looking back I can’t fathom the amount of provisions she must’ve secured in advance.
I mean, the Sochko men and a table full of post-teenage boys.
I don’t remember her ever cutting us off.
If we were still eating, she’d keep making.
The tacos were just the best.
Mortals like me would fill ourselves full and tap out after seven or eight.
Matt was usually good for a couple more.
Bill, Danny and John?
In another league.
I remember one night in particular.
Somewhere north of double digits Bill called it quits.
Danny and John, though, kept goin’.
Defending home court I think Danny took it as a point of pride.
John, skinny as a rail, was simply enjoying himself.
I think Danny tapped out around 14 or so.
Meanwhile John just kept going … and going.
I don’t remember how high he climbed that night.
The number in my head is jumbled, like the way the older boys at Areford playground would keep track of their home runs back in a day.
I only know that John’s performance that night cemented his Taco Night legacy for all time.
__
For the record, Taco Night was one of two truly epic happenings hosted at the Sochko residence.
The other: Trivial Pursuit.
With Mr. Sochko.
While all of us enjoyed hanging out with each other, Mr. Sochko was the main attraction whenever we played. Big B we called him (he was a Bill, too).
Though it’s been more than 30 years, mention “TP with Big B,” to any of us post-teenagers and watch the smiles conquer our faces.
It wasn’t just that Mr. Sochko was the wisest person any of us knew.
Oh my gosh he knew so much.
It was how he delighted in knowledge.
The best part of our games was when he’d expound on the answers. I can still picture him peering over his glasses and smiling as he’d elucidate on a topic.
His was the kind of smile that made you lean in as you listened.
The kindest of smiles.
And we were as ravenous for Big B’s wisdom as we were for Mrs. Sochko’s tacos.
Big B kicked our asses pretty much every time.
I mean, he was a wizened citizen of the world playing with boys who didn’t yet know all they didn’t know.
But as I recall his record wasn’t undefeated.
What made that more special was that Mr. Sochko delighted as much in seeing one of us win (for the record, I’m not sure I ever won). In his congratulations he’d share the same generous smile as when he was sharing wisdom.
There’s a wisdom in that, too, now that I think about it.
To win a game of Trivial Pursuit when Big B was at table? Not sure our neighborhood offered higher accomplishment.
For me the common thread between Taco and Trivial Pursuit nights was that, in those moments I knew enough to know that I was in the best company.
My friends.
Bill’s family.
I mean, the best company.
And that knowledge — that wisdom — is as alive and nourishing to me now as when we gathered around Bill’s dining room table.
I know some post-teenage boys — who now know what they don’t know — who would say the same.
And though Mr. and Mrs. Sochko aren’t with us anymore, in my heart it will always be a short walk to Connor Street … to lingering a couple seconds on the front porch before knocking, just to take in the scent of tortillas frying in the pan.
Letters for Maggie 