I have a shirt I really like. I’ve really liked it since before the turn of the century, so you know that one day the end must come, right?
And it lasted so long because, really, since moving here I rarely wore it. Summers I’m pretty much down to t-shirts every day, and winters are layers of sweatshirts. Or were, before this winter.
This winter, between the new cabin siding, better firewood, a couple of gifts comprising eight really nice flannel shirts and a growing sense that maybe it wasn’t completely necessary for the gulch’s resident hermit to go around looking like Aqualung all the time, I’ve been dressing more like a human being. Last year I even cut my hair for the first time since my daughter’s wedding. Which was in 2006.
All this splendor has been having an effect on my clothing stash. A couple of months ago I bought a new pair of pants! And only this week I found myself actually pricing work shirts on Amazon. I stopped in time, of course, because really that would just be crazy. Traditionally if I can’t get it free or (at worst) at a thrift store, I’ll make it from flour sacks or sew together some old towels or something…
And then this weekend, in honor of Landlady’s regular visit, I wore my favorite shirt. But this morning after seeing her back through the mud to her car and while getting ready to knead bread dough I discovered that an end had come…
Yup, my threadbare old friend, the last civilized shirt I brought with me from the civilized world, has suffered a blowout at the elbow. Didn’t even notice at the time.
And it doesn’t even matter that much, because it’s just sort of a transition between winter and summer. But I’m sitting here thinking that Dickies does make work shirts in olive, and maybe I’m really gonna go ahead and push the button on that Amazon order.
You need leather/suede elbow patches like college profs might have. Cunning!
Yeah, in this case that would only demonstrate the truth of that parable about sewing new patches on old garments. “He’s dead, Jim.”
Make it a short sleeve work shirt, and you should get a couple more years out of it.
The only down side to buying clothing on line is you can’t check over the goods. That’s when the law of unintended consequence will jump up and bight you in the butt. Do you really want to travel all the way back into town to send a shirt back?
What Ben said. It ain’t dead yet. Then you would have a work shirt for those extra nasty jobs and save your new Dickies for town shirts.
Another second for Ben’s idea. I have a couple of what used to be my favorite chambray shirts, complete with the pearl snaps, that became short-sleeve work shirts and I have been wearing them so long the they are literally dissolving, but I got a lot of extra wear from the shortened versions.