The subject of this article is aimed at a most overlooked intellectual topic, but one that will soon find its place among the great ideas of our time. I’m talking about the subject of clothes.
Before commencing, however, a few facts must be confessed. Such a subject could not have found its way into this piece if it were not for the disappearance of approximately 50 pounds by your beloved author. These results followed a not-very-pleasant meeting with the doctor, during which words like “cholesterol” and “triglycerides” were mentioned times not a few. Exactly one diet regimen later, along with several months of strict adherence, not only were the pounds gone, but so was the need for items like Crestor and sleep machines. When all was done, I left the doctor’s office with every bit as much approbation as the disclaim I received earlier.
“You’ve become the poster child for this program around the office,” the good doctor told me. “I’ve never seen such results.”
“Thank you, Doc,” I said, doing my best to seem modest. In reality, my mind was rolling. How could it not? I hadn’t been this size since my senior year in high school, and even our best effort at the great virtues is simply no match when the devil comes calling.
Which he did in earnest a few days later when I was visiting my parents. The only downside to the weight loss, I moaned, was the cost of clothes. It isn’t easily discernible just how many clothes a person can accumulate in 20- or 30-years’ time until such objects must be replaced.
Then, there is the problem of style. Whereas, before, I had bought primarily for comfort, this time … well, let’s just say that this erstwhile need was not the overriding issue. It wasn’t that comfort wasn’t necessary, but at my current weight there is a greater span of options that are comfortable to me. The vast range of choices were so overwhelming that, when I found myself in my parents’ basement that day, I was on the verge of drowning in a sea of urgent uncertainty.
As it happened, I ended up in a sea of clothes.
My wife, Rose, would tell later how I’d simply appeared satyr-like as though from behind a Grecian stone, except it wasn’t a stone, it was a huge conglomerate of clothes – piled, stacked, strewn – and I didn’t have horns and a pipe but was instead wearing my dad’s clothes from the ’70s.
“He stood there tall and lean in bellbottom Levi’s, Wrangler shirt, and J. R. Ewing cowboy hat,” she would say, “looking a little like Burt Reynolds in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and a lot like Woody on ‘Toy Story.’ I didn’t know whether to tell him to change or ask him for his autograph.”
I’d found my look and, at least at this point, not even Buford T. Justice was going to pry it away. It would take the soupy, hot, North Florida atmosphere to do this.
Of course, there was the occasional comment as we packed. “Are you sure you’re packing enough shorts?” Or “Remember, it’s going to be hot down there.” But I was undeterred. The Bandit (that’s right, I had decided to go with it) didn’t do it that way, and I wasn’t going to either.
The first day wasn’t that bad, for the loud and hulking AC unit in our rental house made sure of it. Thus, I came and went in my new ‘70s Western duds with relative ease, simply sliding on a suitable pair of Western board shorts bought from Howler Bros. before we went to the beach, then changing to the much more stylish flairs and western shirts when we came back. Nor was this a problem when we went to dinner, for the North Florida trades drifted through those blousy shirts and wide pants legs like backstage music through the curtains of Carnegie Hall.
It was Pier Park in the middle of the day that finally got me.
Eagerly, I persisted through my wife’s usual warnings while getting dressed, and it was going pretty well while we were shopping. In spite of the dry and vaporous heat wafting up from the dead gray asphalt like broad and numerous adder’s tongues, there were enough shops to drift in and out of to keep a man cool. It was what my son said on the way out of the last shop that burned me.
“Let’s walk out onto the pier.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I told him.
“Yeah, let’s go on the pier,” said my daughter.
I pretended to ignore it but it was already to late.
“Hon,” said Rose as I soldiered on ahead, sweat beginning to pour already. “Oh, hon,” she said again. “Slow down. Slow down a minute.”
I never knew how long that pier was. Nor did I fully understand just how hot it was until we got out on that windless protrusion, the sun bearing down as though in anger, while my clothes, my hair, my person all began to bake, then soak, and finally burn in the relentless and humid sunlight.
I promised my wife later that I was not about to jump off the pier, that I was only climbing onto the rail to get a better look because I thought I had seen a shark, but she didn’t believe me. “You were talking out of your head,” she would say. “I don’t think you realized what you were doing.”
Perhaps she’s right. But I promised readers a treatise on clothes, and so help me, if it breaks the Triton of Neptune, that’s what they’re going to get.
If at all possible, a person should wear what they like no matter the material nor the epoch from which it sprang. For me, this has become the clothes of my childhood, the clothes I vaguely remember my parents wearing, and those I wore myself till the frightening ’80s came along. The attire of the ’70s was classic, manly and American, and it fits well in our nation’s 250th year.
My only admonition is this: When your wife warns you about the dangerous Florida heat, please listen. For the Bandit made out alright in the end, but he never had to go against the Russel Fields Pier in June in the middle of a heat wave. If he had, Old Smoky might’ve ended up the star of the film.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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