It all started a few years back when our little New England village was preparing to celebrate the bi-centennial of its founding. One of the main events planned for that year-long celebration was a parade scheduled to be held on August 9th (which also happened to be my birthday). The parade would be big, not big like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, of course, but much bigger than our usual Spring Gala event. Being a small town about to celebrate a once-in-a-lifetime event, everyone was invited, encouraged actually, to take part in the biggest parade in our history.

Well, it just so happened that just a few months prior to the parade (on Fathers Day to be exact), my wonderful wife surprised me with a gift of a brand new lawn tractor, complete with headlights, a garden variety trailer for hauling yard stuff, and a drink holder molded into the fender. I never saw the price tag for that tractor, but I am certain that it cost more than every car or truck I had ever owned. I was so proud of that tractor, there was nothing that was going to keep me from driving it in the big parade.

Naturally, the theme of the parade was the 200 year history of the town. Like much of New England, generations of our agrarian ancestors battled with our most abundant crop, field stones. So, my first idea for our parade entry was to throw a rope around a granite boulder and drag it the length of the parade. I was sure that the tractor could handle it, but I figured the boulder might do measurable damage to the pavement. The load simply had to be lightened. After a bit more research, I learned that at one point in history there were a few large poultry farms in town. Perfect. I'd make a giant egg, one that was big enough to cover the entire tractor and drive the whole "eggstrordinary" thing right down Main Street. The fatal flaw with this idea was that no one would actually see the tractor.

After a few more days of thinking it over, I had an epiphany, a vision so clear there was no doubt in my mind that this would be the perfect float for this parade. A giant chicken, mounted on its own carriage, attached to the trailer that would be loaded full of neighborhood kids, all towed behind the gleaming new tractor, with me in the drivers seat smiling and waving to the crowd.

And so it came to be, exactly as I'd envisioned it. A couple of weekends and a few long nights later, working secretly in the barn, the float slowly neared completion. We created a six foot high paper mache chicken head, and painted it white with a bright red comb and wattle. To ease the strain on the tractor, we mounted the chicken head on the chassis of a derelict lawn mower that we scrounged at the town dump. With a bit of scrap lumber and old rope, the rolling chicken head was attached to the tailgate of the new garden trailer which in turn was hitched to the tractor itself. On top of the lawn trailer, we bolted an iron garden bench for the kids to sit on, threw on a few bales of hay, one of which was impaled with a striped beach umbrella (also salvaged from the dump), and topped it all off with an assortment of American flags, colorful streamers, brightly colored pinwheels, and a plastic chicken lawn ornament. In these parts, it is customary for marching folks to toss treats or other doodads to parade spectators so we also loaded up a few tin pails with tootsie rolls, bubble gum, and jaw breakers.

With a few days left until the parade, we realized that we needed one final embellishment, costumes! We thought about chicken suits for everyone but that was to ambitious so we settled for the next best thing, chicken shirts! A subtle yet bold proclamation that would express gratitude and admiration for the humblest of creatures. No fowl weather friend, this is an animal that asks for so little yet gives so much in return, our friend indeed, the chicken. Hence, the chicken shirt.

Initially, we made about 10 shirts, one for everyone on the float. Each T-shirt was the same, bright yellow-orange with a big red chicken emblazoned on the front. This first batch of shirts (as well as the next few dozen), were made by hand on our kitchen table using a home-made rubber stamp. Everyone seemed to love the shirt, we gave them to everyone who asked, and to quite a few who didn't (they were our stock gift for relatives the following Christmas). We donated a few to our church auction the following spring and made a few hybrids (white, grey and blue, all with the same big red chicken) for various occasions. For some reason, the shirts appealed to almost everyone young and old, and we had a lot of fun doing it.

Well we were the hit of the parade and won First Prize! So many people loved our shirts, that we started stamping them and sending them to friends all over the world.

And now there's a website! Just amazing ...
Jim