Behind the Shirt

The beginning

Growing up as a kid pretty much sucked.   Great way to start out a story eh? Anyways growing up as a kid meant moving massive amounts of times, most in a year that I remember relocating was 14 times.  Finally we settled in the small town of Dunlap which is located in Tennessee. We had a nice little 2 bedroom house in a decent neighborhood not far from the center of town.  The town consisted of at the time 1 red light, since then they now have 3!

About the time I turned 10 my step dad got this bright idea to build a house in the middle of nowhere.  Let me explain the definition of nowhere just so everyone is clear.

Nowhere: A place no one in their right mind would live.  On the side of a mountain with NO running water and NO electricity.

Now it took about 6 years to build this @#$ @#*$ house because there were only 2 of us doing it and I was only 10 when we started.  We had to roll logs, it was a log cabin, on 50 gallon steel drums up scaffolds in order to put them in place on the 2nd floor. I also dug trenches, repeatedly, to keep the road from washing away since it was on the side of a steep mountain. Finally after years of building this forsaken house we moved in.

Some facts about this house and area:

• It was a 2 story log cabin, 3 bedroom, 2 bath and the inside was and still isn’t completely finished…
• There were no buses to take me to school…
• There was no electricity…
• There was no running water…
• In order to bath I would have to heat water on a wood stove about 2 hours before I had to leave for school…
• Cooking consisted of a gas stove or on the wood stove…
• During dinner time we would start a gas generator so we could watch 30min of TV…
• For lighting we used oil lanterns…
• For amusement I slept…
• Some guy down the road moved in and lived under a rock…
• Another person moved in next to them and lived in a school bus that was converted…

Somewhere to go

Finally  at the age of 16 a lot had happened to me from living like that and I couldn’t take anymore.  So I left home in search of something better.  I moved away and stayed with a dear friend who taught me about computers and electronics.  I soon started doing network administration and PC repair for a company.  It was something I enjoyed very much but wasn’t made to last.  The owner was deported back to Germany for some reason and from that point forward I started freelancing.

The time is now (Then)

About 3.5 years ago my wife was in a serious car accident where 2 people ran through a non-functioning red light.  After 2 surgeries and 2.5 years of physical therapy she is doing much better and can lead a semi normal life minus the occasional weekly shoulder pain.

During this time I designed a Logo for a Joomla open source project.  They came back to me and asked if I could make it print ready for a t-shirt company.  So I fine tuned it and worked with the printing company to make sure it was done to their specifications.  While doing this I really liked seeing my work on a t-shirt and figured I could come up with some basic designs to help raise funds to cover medical bills that were taking over our lives.  I started playing around with some ideas and came up with a t-shirt website that not 1 single person could pronounce correctly. It was so bad I won’t even mention it.

After realizing a site like that would be hard to market I brainstormed and came up with none other than “NekkidTees”.

Definition of Nekkid: Nekkid is not simply being without clothing–It means you are gettin’ nekkid for mischievous purposes. Naked is natural; nekkid is naughty. (definition provided by the Urban Dictionary )

NekkidTees is still new to the scene and believe me there are a LOT of t-shirts companies out there to choose from.

Why choose NekkidTees.com

As I mentioned a sentence ago there are a lot of shirt stores around but I try to keep mine semi different by using ideas from the back of my head, from friends and fans.  While NekkidTees is expanding as fast as I can add and build out new sections I am always looking for input from customers about new ideas, navigational issues, color schemes or what not.

I hope everyone enjoys NekkidTees and can find what their looking for or find that perfect gift for birthdays, gag gifts and etc.  If you can’t find it here or anywhere on the web shoot me a msg on Facebook and I’ll see what I can do to help.

In closing I hope everyone has a great life and if you don’t, then move on to something better.  Don’t get “stuck” doing something you hate.  You only have one life to live (as far as we know) so make the best of it.

Peace and Love,

T-shirt Tommy

*Update – We finally were able to have our Jury Trial after it had been postponed for nearly 4 years. 2 Days of court, the City testified on our behalf, the police officer testified that the lights were out, the 911 tapes showed callers stating the power was out and 2 people had ran the red light, traffic engineering (the people that control the lights) stated it was out. The 2 people we sued even had their stories screwed up, one stated it was working fine and the other stated it went out as they were going under it and the judge told the jury they needed to hurry up because he had a wedding to attend to… The verdict? The Jury found no one at fault. But yet we have $106k in Medical bills, a totaled car and they had $400 in bumper damage. Go Justice System!