College

She was nine years old when I wrote my first story. And I just spent some time reading through my earliest tales as well as the reader comments. I reveled in those times and I turned out stories with equal joy. More about LFG than the clothes. It’s an understatement for me to say that the last nine years have flown by. They have. At warp speed. Maybe that’s why my writing kinda trailed off.

It has and continues to be the zenith of my existence—being LFG’s father. I’ve always said that I’m not looking for any parenting accolades. I’ve just wanted to be present and conduct myself in a manner so that LFG will say that “my dad was always there for me when I needed him”.

And I sure hope that she remembers our antics and silly fun as much as I do. We had a blast. At least I think we did.

She’s not really Southern. I am. Her mother is. Sure she had summer jaunts to the Carolinas to see my mamma but Lily is a mid-Atlantic gal, if not a borderline Yankee. Bethesda will do that to the tender ones.

Yet when it came time to visit colleges my gal wouldn’t even glance at anything north of D.C. She applied to six schools—all of them south of the Mason-Dixon and every one of them accepted her. She’s been in Charleston for two weeks now and I’ve barely been able to get five minutes with her on the phone.

It’s been sorority rush and roommates and classes and everything else that goes with one’s freshman year. And I love her honesty and authenticity. She called home after a couple of rush functions to say that she would no longer be interested in her mother’s sorority. Something about the sisters being empty vessels and wearing excessive jewelry. She found a better fit elsewhere. My gal isn’t very pink and green and I couldn’t be happier.

So here’s to college. And strong, confident women. And to my hope that I’ve done ok as a daddy so far.

Onward.

ADG-the-Two

Part One: Birmingham Alabama—In Alden Pebble Grain

South Carolina, my home state.  Number forty-eight in SAT scores and number two  in gonorrhea. We always jokingly said “thank God for Mississippi” because it always seemed that we were in a death roll headlock scrambling with them to either stay off of the top or bottom of some damn list.

Arkansas—my friend Dawson revels in forwarding me links to news reports about the always absurd shenanigans that go on in South Carolina. She feels better about her native Arkansas when she finds a little bit of embarrassing S.C. skinny to share. And even she’ll admit that her hopes for Bill Clinton’s presidency offering Arkansas a bit of polish were childish. Instead of a spiffed up image, Arkansas “got nothing but a schmear of tarted up red lipstick”. Her words, not mine.

It seemed that a few years ago there was something going on in my state every week. And this was several years after they finally got the damned rebel flag off the top of the state house.  Everyone knows about our governor being  MIA while supposedly taking a walkabout on the Appalachian Trail.

And an assistant state attorney general and former legislator, old enough to be an historical relic, found drunk in his SUV with a teenage hoochie coochie merchant and an array of sex toys and poppers throwed all about in rolling playpen. I got an urgent SCUD email about both of these unfortunate events, annotated  of course by Dawson.

And the one that Dawson took particular relish in sending over was the video clip of a South Carolina beauty pageant contestant speaking some kind of Pig Latin pidgin incoherency when answering her finalist impromptu question during the Miss Teen USA pageant. Her email simply said “You must be proud”.

It ain’t always easy being Southern. Oh, and before I go any further with this overwrought sub Mason-Dixon workout, let me say that the rest of the contiguous forty-eight ain’t any cleaner. It’s just that when we Southerners sin, we do it with relish. Sweet pepper relish. And devilled eggs, and pimiento cheese, and sweet tea and…shut up.  

I’ll never forget a documentary I watched about the efforts to integrate the University of Mississippi. They interviewed students who  were there amidst the conflict. And one member of the 1962 SEC champions, undefeated OleMiss football team from that year choked up during the interview. He confessed to the journalist that he’d been trying to make peace with the legacy of his beloved state for his entire life.

He was a big boy, and one who seemed disinclined to show much emotion and certainly not while a camera was rolling.  But you could tell that he was still hurtin’. And he said to the journalist in halting utterances, parsed to hold back his tears; something to the effect that “I’ve been speaking to any and every one of you who’ve ever contacted me over the years. And none of you get it right”. I don’t think the boy felt like anyone had ever really heard him and I think he felt like none of this journalist’s predecessors had done anything to help Mississippi heal.

Oh sh_t, I’m five hundred and fifty words in and I got side tracked. This was supposed to be about Alabama and Alden Pebble Grain tassel loafers. Hang with me, crackers.

I’m not sure why Alabama never entered my mind as I sought solace through finding at least one other Southern state to benchmark my crazy ass Palmetto patch against. Surely it hasn’t been easier to be from Alabama. Let me see here…Bull Connor, firehoses and attack dogs, church bombings and of course, Selma.

One of my colleagues when I was in the pharmaceutical industry revealed to me something one night. And within his confession, I could tell that after all these years, he still didn’t know how to wear it. He tugged at the too tight collar of it all while uttering every word to me. He grew up in Montgomery and it was his municipal bus driving uncle, his father’s brother, who ordered Rosa Parks to the back of the bus.

"Get your left hand off of my ass Mister President"

Thank God for Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Zelda Fitzgerald, Helen Keller, Winston Groom and Bear Bryant is all I got to say. Oops. I just realized that I threw a few crazies in this thank God compensatory Alabama bandage.

My sister married her high school sweetheart the October after they graduated from college. Just like she was supposed to. They moved to Birmingham and thus my association with the Pittsburgh of the South began.

My brother-in-law was my five year older brother. Not the older brother I never had. I had him. He was my brother. He was the older brother who told me that if I wanted to be a Knight of the Kappa Alpha Order like him, I had to do this, that and the other before I ever hit the doors of college so to better my chances of getting in. I had to pull my baggy Levis 501s up and cut my hair. And after I pulled my baggy jeans up I was told to trade them in for some khakis. And I bought a pair of Weejuns and remember thinking that if I didn’t get a KA bid, I had no clue what I’d do with those shoes. 

Mind you, I was still trying real hard to be a hippie—something I never was really good at.

I’m on the record as saying that I’d a sold my mama to get a bid from the KA’s. And y’all know how much I loved my mama. (Let me clarify. He wasn’t my actual blood brother. My characterization here is strictly metaphorical. I just panicked at the realization that some of you Yankee asses who read my caca might actually believe that we Southerners marry our siblings. That’s an ugly stereotype. We draw the line after first cousins.)

And so my two or three times a year visits to Birmingham were always fun. Visits made more so by the addition of young’uns—first a nephew and then a niece and another nephew after that. But my brother-in-law used me like a tool while I was there and I loved it.

I was his excuse for getting out of the house and going honky tonkin’. And he’d sorted out all of the best ones…the nicer, more respectable places around Five Points as well as the low-er brow ones sprinkled all over town. And God knows how back then I loved  a hyper-air conditioned Southern juke joint. I still do. Here I am one morning after a Birmingham night out. L.L. Bean Mocs, LaCoste knit shirt, old surplus khakis from Fort Bragg. Just about to spew.

Tants, The Plaza, and some really dodgy joint out near the airport come to mind. We would drop my brother-in-law’s Jaguar off with a guy who detailed private airplanes. His name was Ike and he detailed the dooky out of cars too. We’d then go to this joint nearby and eat a cheeseburger and have a dozen beers. Nirvana.

My Birmingham sorties trailed off for various reasons and until a couple of months ago, I hadn’t set foot in Birmingham for a decade.  My sister and brother-in-law divorced he, the  Topsider wearing, heavy starched khakis, bourbon and branch swilling good ole boy has been living with his current wife in New York for many years now.  

My mother’s  twenty month odyssey before leaving this world was transformative for me. Her passing was too slow coming and she’d be the first to tell you so. And it wore me out so as easy as I can say that it was transformative, it’s too soon for me to tell you what the final transformation will net-out.  

I was just getting used to wearing my orphan existentiality when I got the text that my niece was dead. It’s been three months the shocking cruelty and acuteness of it still has my head spinning. It’s a punishing world when four months after ones mom passes, the universe decides to rip the fledgling scab off of your heart by taking someone so young.

So my sojourn back to Birmingham was gut wrenching. But I was happy to be in the service of my sister while there. I ran the errands and did the mundane as well as the less than joyful duties involving retrieving ashes and such. But after a few days, I needed a break. So I let my errand running send me over to Mountain Brook in search of the old Richard’s of Mountain Brook haberdashery site. 

I’d revelled in my buddy TCD’s email from a few years ago about the shop and I posted it in a previous blog story but let me share it with you again….

Richards of Mountain Brook

“Every now and then when I write something that really resonates with someone; I’ll get a private email in response and sometimes the correspondence itself is post-worthy. I wrote Nuanced Authenticity back in August and received a delightful recollection about a haberdashery in the affluent area of Birmingham, Alabama known as Mountain Brook. I’m sharing it with permission from my buddy TCD because his email is to me, as evocative as my original story.

Or maybe it just hits all of my maudlin buttons. At any rate, here’s to the “Richards of Mountain Brook” caliber haberdasheries of days gone by. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m sorry that y’all…the younger set of Trads…missed these gems. And as my cousin Tin-Tin says of our now more derivative than ever world…“Not as good as it was. Better than it will be.”

Here’s TCD’s email…

“This post hit so many memory keys that I can't take the time to list them....but....

Our version of "your Singleton's" in a suburb of Birmingham, AL called Mountain Brook was "Richards of Mountain Brook".

It was located on a shady side street called Petticoat Lane in an old Tudor style building with two bay windows flanking an imposing door with a leaded glass coat of arms.

We knew we were adults when we graduated to Richards from the "CanterburyShop" a half a block away.

"Canterbury" was our "nuance 101" with Bass Weejuns ( $14.95), Gant OCBD, surcingle belts in about one hundred color combinations, Corbin trousers & Southwick Blazers & sport coats....

"Richards" took a high school freshman to his Dad's world & instantly verified it was where you wanted to be even if it had not occurred to you before.....

As you stepped into the doorway, you were confronted by a huge round mahogany table with reps, clubs, & foulards (all of course labelled..."made in England expressly for Richards".... arranged spoke in-wheel around the table grouped by color. Guarding the display on either side were two complete suits of armor.

Beyond the battle-ready armor were shelves and credenzas of Troy Guild OCBD....

Just down the center-hall, waist-high shelving displaying shoes (Crockett & Jones) and socks....

Suits (private label with requisite..."made in England" as well as Norman Hilton)....

Richard had a great eye and understood "Nuance" whether in selections offered or in antique furnishings which abundantly decorated the shop...

Just a great place (& owner) with a sixth sense in how to deploy service and an intelligent knowledge base of background of fabric, weave, fit, hand, & pattern as well as a flair for what was complimentary in terms of tradition or, if you dare, sprezzatura!

He magically combined both during the Christmas Season when posted Welsh Guards in full regalia in front of the shop and conducted Changing of the Guard twice per day....and then, when you had made your purchases....all were gift-wrapped in festive holiday color combinations of paper & ribbon in complex bows, each of which held a Johnny Walker scotch miniature.....

Thanks for the nudge to remember the late 60s and early 70s.....wonderful then and cherished now!””

And I found it. The old Richard’s of Mountain Brook space is now some kind of design shop. But as I snapped a few iPhone photos, I imagined it as TCD described it. And standing there gave me the same great feeling that I so enjoy when I walk any patch where years previous or centuries past, something significant occurred. 

I kid you not, the feeling is no less when I discover a Richards of Mountain Brook site than when I’m standing in the Huey Long assassination corridor fingering the bullet pocked granite walls of the Louisiana State House or looking through the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Suppository. (Ask any country boy…that wasn’t an impossible shot by any stretch)

So my errand running reprieve from bereavement nourished me even though I knew that the unguent was short acting. I shot some photos and emailed TCD to let him know that I was on the grounds of his former sartorial mother church. And then I rounded the corner…

I'll have Part Two ready for you sometime in early 2017. Shut up.

Onward. 80-G-2

Billy Scott—R.I.P

“C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-AAAA” …the part of Billy Scott and the Georgia Prophet’s song California where during the refrain they sound out each letter of the word…you remember, no? Well, actually, unless you were a fratty kid thirty years ago, perhaps you don’t.

The Georgia Prophets had two really fun hits that they are most remembered for…California and I’ve Got the Fever. Neither song, as great as they were to sing along to at the top of your lungs in a beer soaked KA house at 2am, were really great songs to dance to. Shag that is. Fever was too fast and California slightly too slow for the more elegant, nuanced hand dancing that characterizes the Carolina Shag. As I’ve posited before, our version of the Fratty-Trad mating dance is all about footwork and movement from the waist down while your upper body is fairly calm. Further, the Carolina version is about doing that footwork in a tight little confined bit of dance floor real estate. You move around, ultimately, all over the dance floor. But the footwork that if you’re good at it, has others stepping back to watch you dance, occurs in a space about the size of a shoe box.

 Oh, and they had another great song that you’d want on your jukebox at the fratty—Nobody Loves Me Like You Do. Hard to shag to too, though. So I’ve just settled on the fact that the Georgia Prophets songs were good as background music while you were standing there, waxed cardboard complimentary  cup of bad draft beer in hand, sh_t talking some sorority trixie on the off-chance that the next song would be one that you could shag to. Or go upstairs and look at etchings. Shut up.

Fever and California were good songs to dance to if you did that Virginia...UVA—Sweet Briar—Hollins sling your date around epileptically…all arms and no nuanced footwork technique. But hell, anyone could learn to do that shit in fifteen minutes. I loved the Sweet Briar—Hollins gals that I met at the Chinese Disco during one sweltering hot Washington summer of my youth. And when one of the Georgia Prophets songs cranked up, I’d dance with ‘em to those songs, but only my style of dancing. I saved the arm slinging, contortionated, epileptical activities till we returned to my place—the ever so elegant Presidential Gardens Apartments where all of the other 24/7 hungover interns lived.

So BillyScott at 70, had some severe stomach pains back during the first week of October. Pancreatic cancer gets you fast. Real fast. And the older I get, the younger 70 seems. Thank you Billy Scott, for all of my 2am sing-alongs with you. Thanks Billy, for taking me back this morning, to some of the greatest memories of the greatest seven years of my life—my undergrad fratty epoch. My love and prayers go to your family and all in your sphere who, like me, will miss you.

Onward.  C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-AAAA

ADG    T-W-O

California

I've Got the Fever

Trad-Ivy Tuesday: The Kobe Beef Burger of Camp Mocs

I was sharing with a reader some time back that when I lived in Montclair New Jersey, the local cobbler, in his halting home-countried pidgin-esque English gave me the final verdict on my maiden pair of L.L. Bean Camp Mocs. He had just completed their third resoling. After twelve years of constant wear and now my third set of rubber–re-treads and new leather laces, he said that the leather was too worn-out to stitch another pair of soles securely to them. I was by then, vaguely urbane but upon hearing such news, I reverted back to my Horry and Williamsburg Counties, South Carolina roots and blurted..."Do what daddy?" I reckon that Montclair New Jersey hadn't and hasn't yet again, been host to a Southern boy declaring such.

There’s no question that I got my money’s worth out of my first pair. A pair that arrived in the mail at my mama’s house in 1979. You didn’t have such things sent to the KA house back then. And keep in mind that this was back in the time when I’d still not traveled anywhere to speak of so all of the Brooks Brothers and L.L. Bean things that I encountered were either through their catalogues or from seeing someone wearing them at a college boondoggle and declaring that I had to have “it.” My Florence South Carolina Trad Haberdashery didn’t sell shoes and my hometown Weejun source sold us our Topsiders, the only other non-Weejun shoe in my line-up back then.

So in 1979, if you walked into a fratty party down in the Southern backwaters with a pair of L.L. Bean Camp Mocs on, you were a curious outlier amidst a sea of Weejuns and Topsiders. And I liked that. Just as the Trad-Prep-Ivy style ethos should be a result, not an objective, I’ve always kinda reveled in the fact that for some reason, my whateverishness has resulted in me being a bit of an outlier. Five gets ten that I was outlying in my Camp Mocs in the photo above...replete with terrycloth Daks trousers. Shut up.

Surely it isn’t surprising to you that I still have my 1979 pair. If you’ve read more than two of my stories you know that I’m a mawkish-maudlin sentimentalist who with every passing day, spends more time with my head in the past as opposed to embracing the future. And I’m not resistant to casting off material things. I’ve shed and edited ruthlessly my stuff over these past few months and will continue to do so as I slowly-ever-so-slowly, get around to moving. But the 1979 Mocs have too many memories. They’ve been on three continents as well as in every decent and indecent honky-tonk and barbecue joint in the contiguous forty-eight states. Oh, and I had them on when I peed atop a volcano in Hawaii. We drank beer all the way up and …

Here I am. Hung-ed-over to the point of bleeding out of my eyes one morning…in the summer of 1979, at my sister and brother-in-law’s first house in Birmingham Alabama. They were in their mid-twenties and my sister had just delivered her first child, a little boy, about three months earlier. My brother-in-law, the KA fratty boy who I idolized and considered the older brother I never had, was desperate. As much as he was overjoyed to be the father of a new born son, he was also twenty-six years old. And the domestic dynamics coupled with his day job, had him itching to hit the streets with me when I was there. Nightly.

And I was THE perfect excuse for going out. Every. Damn. Night. “We can’t let little ole undergrad fratty boy ADG just sit around here” he’d say to his wife and new mom, my sister. So my brother-in-law, along with my L.L. Bean Camp Mocs and I would hit the street every night for such low-brow places as Tant's, The Plaza (upside down) and once, against my wishes we went to Sammy’s. He was the coolest guy I knew at the time and he drove a great, albeit unreliable British Racing Green Jaguar. Peer pressure...family dynamics...impending liver disease and L.L. Bean Camp Mocs. 

I even used Shoe Goo on them when the leather was so worn that it just began giving up-out-around the stitching and the rubber sole. My 1979 made in America version, as I and others have written about, were different than the current L.L. Bean Camp Moc that’s made in El Salvador. I won’t bore you with the precise differences. Go back and read the old posts. But even with all of my complaints about the current version, they are, at just under eighty bucks, a decent value.

I wore my original pair ten-fold more frequently than my Bean Moc replacements so I’ll never know if the real difference is in longevity. My Salvadorian replacements will outlive me. Same goes for my Maine Hunting Boot—Shoe version that I replaced a few years ago. Still, I can’t get rid of the old ones.

And then someone called my attention to Rancourt and their Mocs. Rancourt...holdouts not unlike Alden, amidst the fifty-year mass exodus of New England shoe makers. I got Rancourt Venetian loafers from Leffot and loved ‘em. I even picked up a pair of Quoddy Venetian Camp Mocs and loved the idea of them…and certainly the quality of workmanship was there…but I couldn’t get the darned things to stay on my foot so some Trad kid, courtesy of ebay, got ‘em for a bargain. But what appealed and still appeals to me about these makers is their ongoing commitment to turning out the kind of goods that L.L. Bean was known for before the slow decline. You know...when they sourced more of their stuff from domestic producers and when American consumers weren’t so punch drunk from the unit price discount goat rodeo that’s so much a part of retailing today. You remember don’t you? It was when the likes of Orvis, that little operation up in Manchester Vermont, used to rely on Hulme to make their iconic Battenkill green canvas gear instead of some sweatshop out of State. Literally. On all counts.

And speaking of green…I finally decided to spend some and make some. But in typical ADG Fuzzy Diced style, I couldn’t be happy with the table-grade standard, tasty goods that Rancourt offered in their Camp Moc line-up. I reckon you could say that I was jonesing for some strange. So I sent Kyle Rancourt an email and asked him if I could bespeak something off the menu. And he said… “Do what?” and I said “Yep” and he said “Really?” and I said “Yep” and then after eleven more clarifications, guess what? Kyle said “Yep” too.

So what I ended up creating is the Kobe Beef Burger of Camp Mocs. Anthony Bourdain rants entertainingly about the absurdity associated with posh restaurants offering patrons with too much money and not nearly enough breeding, a beef patty made from ground Kobe. Here’s an excerpt from Bourdain’s rant…“Enterprising restaurants are now offering the “Kobe beef burger,” enticingly priced at near or above $100 a pop. And if there’s a better way to prove one’s total ignorance of all three words – Kobe, beef, and burger – this, my friends, is it. It’s the trifecta of dumb-ass. …you are asking the chef to destroy the very textural notes for which Kobe is valued by smarter people. …for an eight-ounce Kobe burger, you are paying for the chef to feed you all the outer fat and scrap bits he trimmed off the outside of his “real” Kobe so he can afford to serve properly trimmed steaks to wiser patrons who know what the hell they’re doing.”

So Bourdain is calling out the stupidity and absurdity manifest in both the creator and consumer associated with using such sublime raw material for such a pedestrian outcome when more standard-fare beef would suffice to the point of being indiscernible. Well that kinda sums my ass up right there now doesn’t it? My love of shell cordovan is well established. I won’t bore you with my horse flank devotion and its genesis…just go here and refresh yourself if you want the contextual antecedent under your skirt before grinding through the rest of this story. But a shell cordovan camp moc? Why not?

And while we’re at it…while we are using sublime, Kobe Beef caliber raw material, let’s really tart it up. Let’s do it in green shell cordovan. When I asked Kyle Rancourt about it, he said “Do what?” and I said “Yep” and he relented. And then I asked how much and he told me and I said “Damn.” And then I paid the man.

I speculated that their arrival would be dramatic…either good dramatic or bad dramatic. It could go either way. Listen, if you always play it safe the drama will be minimal…on both ends of the spectrum. And for me, the Fuzzy Maximalist, I take my chances and they’ve not always yielded good outcomes. My Flusser mistakes story is here.

But my Rancourt Green Cordovans are sublime in every way. Replete with the specifically requested brick red rubber bottoms and stainless steel silver eyelets—it’s the little details that often make or break these things. Brass looking eyelets woulda sunk this ship from the get-go so I bet I sent Kyle Rancourt nine-zillion emails clarifying my specs for these.

And they already have some up-front patinated character depth that only Horween genuine shell cordovan can offer. I can’t wait to see how these babies' patination evolve...lift wise and otherwise as their Horween secret-sauced remoulade-ed impregnations give up some secrets.

Are these Mocs a folly? Perhaps. Am I pleased? You bet. And let me say this about Rancourt. I’m over the top happy that they are thriving. They're a small business so they aren’t without their process hiccups and predictable challenges of trying to remain consistent in quality while attempting to scale up their business to meet thank goodness, demand…and the somewhat-free-market allowance for a decent net-net margin. No margin—No mission. And suffice it to say that I received no discount on these shoes. Kyle Rancourt isn’t even aware that I’m a blogger and he won’t be ‘till I send him a link to this story.

Onward. Green. No envy.

ADG-2-Vert

Party Tape 25 or “Ronnie, Ronnie, ADG in love tape”

A “tape?” Yep. Cassette.  College. Homemade mix tapes…mash ups…whatevers. My favorite, and still around here somewhere in a box, was the one that JEP, my good buddy made for me. The “Ronnie, Ronnie” tape was packed with classics and I recalled it this morning when I was looking on YouTube for a song to complement my Trad-Ivy Tuesday post that I just put in the queue. The “Ronnie, Ronnie, ADG in love” phrase is written on the tape. The story regarding the tape’s subtitle won’t convey here for manifold reasons. Suffice it to say that it was alcohol and girl related. I did though; find a photo of me from about the time of the love tape’s creation. And coincidentally, the other fella in the photo is Ronnie.

I can recall with reasonable accuracy what’s on my Party Tape 25. And I decided to share some of  it with you. A “tape?” Yep.

Onward. ADG, Deuce.

Oogum Boogum. Brenton Wood.

Only The Strong Survive. Jerry Butler.

Shotgun. Jr. Walker and the All Stars.

What  Does it Take? . Ditto.

Monkey Time. Major Lance.

I’ll Always Love My Mama. The Intruders.

Color Him Father. The Winstons.

Cowboys to Girls. The Intruders.

Everybody Plays The Fool. The Main Ingredient.

Just Dont Want to be Lonely. Ditto.

Ms. Grace. The Tymes.

Build Me Up Buttercup. The Foundations.

Starting All Over Again. Mel & Tim.