"You're not wearing JEANS ...?!"

Which one am I? See bottom of this post for answer!

A little Facebook exchange re: jeans with a friend from Hiram Local Schools days is to blame for this post. He didn't recall that many of us wore jeans to school; I sent him the 7th grade photo from above (fall, 1956) showing that I and some others are wearing them. But I seem to remember that once high school arrived, not too many guys wore them ... or did we? I could check the yearbooks, but I'm too lazy. Instead, I'll just wax wise (?) here.

I should say this before I go on: Now that I'm retired I wear jeans pretty much every day in cooler and cold weather. In warm/hot weather, I shamelessly wear shorts, exposing to the world my 73-year-old legs. (The world, I must admit, is not all that impressed.)

My mother didn't really like jeans; it was, I think, a class thing. And here's a memory that could make you laugh though it still makes me wince.

About, oh, thirty years ago we were all out in Oregon for a family reunion (tens of thousands of Dyers still live out in the Northwest). Joyce, Steve, and I were staying in the same motel (different rooms!) as my parents. One of the events was a picnic at my uncle John's house; lots of Dyers were going to be there.

As the time neared for departure, we emerged from our rooms. I was wearing jeans. Mom looked at me and said, "You're not wearing jeans, are you?" Recall: I was in my forties.

I replied with some weak offering: "Mom, it's a picnic!" Though, to be honest, I don't think my voice at that moment gave the slightest hint of an exclamation mark.

So I slumped and slouched and grouched back into our room, changed into a pair of "real" pants (uttering grievous execrations the while), then went to the picnic, where, of course, all the other men--and many of the women--were wearing jeans.

Mom didn't like shorts, either. And when, later, we would visit her in her stages-of-care place in Lenox, Mass., she would tell me (adorned as I invariably was in shorts or jeans) that the dining hall would not serve me if I were so bedight.*

I never found that to be true. But ... you know moms ...?

Now, of course, my mother has died. March 10, 2018. And as I sit here, typing in my jeans, I wish she would walk in the room and tell me to change into something more appropriate.


*I'm in front, second from the left. Can you tell that we moved to Hiram from Oklahoma only a few weeks earlier?
**an archaic word for dressed--a word I learned in Poe's 1849 poem "Eldorado." This marks the first time I've ever used the word myself!

   Gaily bedight,
   A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
   Had journeyed long,
   Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

   But he grew old,
   This knight so bold,
And o’er his heart a shadow
   Fell as he found
   No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

   And, as his strength
   Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow;
   “Shadow," said he,
   “Where can it be,
This land of Eldorado?”

   “Over the mountains
   Of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow,
   Ride, boldly ride,"
   The shade replied,--
“If you seek for Eldorado!”