You Think I Care About Your Society?

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers ⇒ (“ASME”) is a non-profit, dues-collecting membership organization that creates and maintains standards, holds conferences, and publishes ME magazine ⇒. Membership at the national level is open to engineers and engineering students that work within any and all engineering disciplines globally despite the name of the society. Membership at the local level, or section in ASME parlance, is determined by address of record.

The ASME is one of the oldest standards-issuing groups in the United States. As such, the society is in charge of a large portfolio of codes and standards. A sampling of three random ASME stanards include Engineering Drawing Practices (ASME Y14.100), Nuclear Power Plant Air-Cleaning Units and Components (ASME N509), and Roof Deck and Balcony Drains (ASME A112.6.4). The most well-known of the society’s standards is the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (“BPVC”). Unfortunately, the text of these codes and standards are not available for free, and therefore can not be linked to from this page.

ASME is unique among shirt commissioners featured within Free Shirt Archive in that the society was responsible for changing the law. American Society of Mechanical Engineers v. Hydrolevel Corporation ⇒, a 6-3 Supreme Court of the United States decision of the Burger Court in 1982, was decided against the ASME. The Court found that ASME violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, and was forced to pay treble (3 times) damages to the Hydrolevel Corporation. This established precedent that non-profits could be held responsible for violating anti-trust laws in America. The case is typically cited whenever apparent authority ⇒ is relevant.

Mechanix

Mechanical engineering itself consists of the design, building, and use of machinery. Mechanical engineers are required to understand and manipulate physics, heat, materials, and other machinery to create new machines.

Stroke Mechanics

Golf is a sport played with a club and a ball with the point being to get the ball into a distant hole within the fewest number of attempts. The sport is mostly played individually and mostly outside on custom manicured courses. Variants of the game include miniature golf ⇒, disc golf ⇒, and sholf.

Both playing or watching the game is held in high social esteem. Half of the appeal is that a golfer need neither to be physically fit ⇒ nor young ⇒ to play. The other half of the appeal is that golf is a status symbol. Players have to have the money to buy or rent a large set of equipment in addition to greens fees or membership. Add to that how much land the golf courses take up to give the players cover to go hang out at the clubhouse instead. With so much social exclusion, it is no wonder that the social climber would be interested in the game or that the market is so lucrative.

I suspect that this shirt and golf outing were both local ASME section initiatives. The back of the shirt is quite a bit more boy’s club than a national organization would typically want to be branded. Plus, there are also probably too many members of the society for all of them to fit comfortably within a single golf course. Unfortunately, the identity of the particular section that held this golf outing in 200, at which golf course, and which day of the year are not marked on the shirt design.

The Man

What did I mean when I wrote earlier in the dossier about the back of the shirt being “boy’s club”? This shirt is probably among the most obnoxious shirts in my collection. The incongruity of the dignity of a professional association and of a “royal & ancient” sport being contrasted with juvenile humor and drawing skills is quite unexpected.

The drawing of a man preparing his left-handed golf swing on the back of this shirt is so bad that it is good again. I openly admit that I ironically enjoy the man for being uniquely drawn. He had to have been drawn at some point in the 1980s; even then he would have looked a little odd with his MC Hammer pants ⇒ and totally black shades. His over-jagged look was low-tech back in 2000, and will only continue to stick out throughout time.

The double entendre “GOLF IS A GAME OF INCHES… SOME OF US JUST HAPPEN TO BE BORN WITH A BIGGER ADVANTAGE” takes the meaning of the shirt to a place that the man alone was unable. That man is now the symbol of both golfing skill and part length. Whatever advantage comes from those inches is countered by the knowledge that what balls the golfer has are teeny-tiny; what is length without potency?