Matt Wymer, 36, attended the Saturday book fair at Della Davidson Elementary School in Oxford. He was the only adult in a group of children who played musical chairs during the event, and he was the first to lose or give up a chair.

He later sat near the wall as the children continued the process-of-elimination game.

Wymer grew up in Oxford and has fond memories of being a teen in the town.

“It was awesome,” he said. “It was way smaller than it is now. We used to hang out in the parking lot at Hardee’s. There’s not one of those here anymore. It’s a lot different now than it was. The university has eaten Oxford up.”

After high school, Wymer said he attended a number of colleges that took him all the way to California.

“I came back and finished at Ole Miss,” he said. Wymer earned two degrees in art and anthropology.

“Then I was going to go back and get my doctorate,” he said, “but, man, it was hard to be broke for that long. I started having kids, and you know, you gotta feed those guys.”

Wymer has worked as a cook at Proud Larry’s, Bottletree Bakery and elsewhere. Today, he’s the owner of Deep Fried T-shirts at 2618 West Oxford Loop. The company celebrated its 10th anniversary last July.

“We’re in the South, and everything is better when it’s deep fried,” Wymer said.

He said the process of making T-shirts reminded him of frying.

“You put colored grease on the shirt and cook it, and it comes out nice and crispy on the other side,” he said in an earlier interview. “We make hot fresh cotton.”

Wymer also studied print-making at the University of Mississippi. He said the company sells some of its own designs that include an Oxford-themed shirt and a landshark T-shirt. They also recently became licensed to print fraternity and sorority T-shirts.

“We are going to do a ‘Oxford’s for Lovers’ T-shirt,” he said. “It will probably be a Valentine’s Day thing.”

Wymer said he’s had many careers, including working in electronic repair.

“Everything is disposable now, so there’s not really need for that anymore,” he said.

One of his favorite jobs now is reading his children “Goodnight Moon” and “The Gruffalo,” a book about a mouse walking through a European forest.