Father's Day 2020

It's amazing how time flies. I wrote this story almost ten years ago and my goodness what a decade it has been for me since. My little daughter LFG who ultimately became as much of a focus here as topics sartorial will be twenty years old next week. She has two years of college with a 4.0 GPA behind her now. And I cannot adequately express what a privilege it is to be her father 

She's taking me to dinner this evening and I'm doubly excited. Happy to be with her and also giddy to be--socially distanced and all other appropriate measures complied--out again with small, responsible groups of humanity. I moved back to Alexandria after being in Bethesda for six years and the world immediately went into lock down. Stir crazy is an understatement.

But what about clothes? I've not spent in the last five years what I used to spend every six months on clothes at my zenith.  I still  love all things sartorial. That hasn't changed. I just don't need anything. 

Kudos to all you fathers who continue to make your kids a top priority. There's nothing more important.

Onward.

ADG II

Trad Dad…My Father

By Dustin Grainger

September 2010        

The original of this poorly shot photo is about the size of those pictures that my daughter and I take in the amusement park photo-booths at the beach. My hunch is that a similar booth is exactly where this one was taken. Probably in a bus station en route to Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. An acne faced kid from the farm, doing his best to be a man. After all, men get drafted. Men go to Fort Jackson for Basic Training. And from what I’ve been told, my dad was anything but pleased to be drafted at the tail end of a war. Fort Sill Oklahoma was as far as my dad got after Basic Training. He loved the drinking, dice and cards part of his patriotic duty but was fairly ambivalent about the rest. He stayed crazy about two of those three for the remainder of his short life. I’m not sure why the dice trailed off.

            I’ve stared at this photo for hours over the years.  Wondering how a kid in his late teens—a tobacco farm kid from Horry County South Carolina—ever found the inspiration for such a cool outfit. An assemblage of texture, geometry and tone. I wonder what the colors were like. I’m taken by many things in this photograph and left speculating about many more. I’m like that. I have the gift or curse of an incredibly active mind. But what I mostly speculate about is the genesis of this kid’s style. The inspirational sources of his kit…his contrivance…his rig. My father was a clothes fanatic.

   

        Alan Flusser and I discussed it several years ago and Alan was sweetly but confidently dismissive. Almost assigning my question to the silly category. “Movies and magazines…shop windows and men from the professions, fathers and uncles. That’s where men got sartorial inspiration.” Certainly makes sense. Ralph Lauren tells stories about shop windows and the Big Screen as sources of inputs to his pediatric noggin…antecedents for his sense of style expression. Alan’s dismissive answer was grounded in the obvious. He grew up in a fairly affluent New York City suburb and watched his father don sartorially rich contrivances head to toe every day.

            

      Alan mentions his father a couple of times in his books and his characterization of his dad’s style sensibilities always resonated with me. He dedicated his first book, Making the Man to his father.

            “To my father, whose esoteric wardrobe first whetted my appetite for French lisle, hand-clocked socks, striped English suspenders and garters, Brooks Brothers button down shirts and alligator tassel loafers, and whose memory is never far from mind when in my travels I happen upon some exquisite legacy from his time, an item crafted by artists and altogether elegant.” 

Alan again calls upon the memory of his father in his 1985 sartorial treatise Clothes and the Man.

            “I received my first lessons on how to dress from my father, for whom the possibilities of dressing well elicited considerable interest and enjoyment. He was in the real estate business and he used the way he dressed to project a successful image. Many mornings I’d watch him go through his daily ritual of dressing for work. The shirt, the tie, the suit, the shoes were all carefully selected so that he looked and felt his best. I believed it was normal to take that much care in deciding how one should look, to put such thought into the appropriateness of the clothes he wore. I didn’t realize then that my father was in a small minority of men, holdovers from a previous era who not only appreciated the feel and look of fine clothing but respected the rules and taste of decorum.”

            I’ll never satisfactorily reconcile the sources of my father’s sartorial knack. The tobacco farms of Horry County require a bit more than a trip on the ferry or through the tunnel to be in New York City and amidst a Stork Club and 21-esque reservoir of ape-worthy sartorial subjects. I do know a few things. And what I know doesn’t quell my curiosity, it rouses it. My farmer grandfather was an unwavering stalwart of the agrarian New Deal Democracy. Never did I see him in overalls but never did I see him in anything other than a Hart Schaffner and Marx navy blue serge suit for church. Or khakis, a blue button-down shirt…short sleeves in the summer-long in the winter, a windbreaker or barn jacket, and a Stetson or Dobbs hat for weekdays on the farm. His everyday hats, straw or felt, were subordinated from their original role as Sunday go-to-church hats. Rest assured that my father got none of the panache captured in that photo-booth snapshot from his own father.

            But what about books, magazines and movies? My grandparents were simple people who lived a provincial Southern farm life and wanted for nothing and that’s a good thing because they didn’t have much. Perhaps a bit of my dad’s sartorial traction was gained as a toddler. My grandmother made his clothes when he was little and I’ve been told that he always wore a hat. Bare headed John F. Kennedy did nothing to assuage his hat affinity in later years. I never saw my dad dressed without a hat—ever. My sister and I still revel in our reminiscences of summers on our grandparent’s farm. Do a quick inventory on every sound one makes when singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm and you’ve pretty much populated the farm of my father’s youth. We loved visiting the farm as much as my father hated it growing up. My grandmother told me numerous times about my father’s insistence that he would never come back to the farm once he left.

            He was fastidious and loathed the grit and gum associated with what at that time, was a crop whose economic margins were stronger than anything else you could put in the ground—tobacco. And his loathing didn’t come from my grandfather working him and his brother like dogs. My grandfather was a softie and my dad took every liberty to skirt any form of callus creating, fingernail soiling farm work. My dad didn’t do squat that he didn’t want to do.

            I’ll allow an occasional movie in my speculation about my dad’s style inspiration but that’s about it. I’d bet that the magazines and books that I saw in my grandparents’ home were similar to what was there when my dad was growing up. Readers Digest, Progressive Farmer, local newspapers, The Bible and maybe another one-off publication from time to time but that’s about it. This was not an intellectually curious household.

            So who knows? My father died when I was sixteen. Timing is everything and at sixteen I wasn’t exactly amidst long, twisty turny “tell me about your childhood; dad” interactions with my old man. There are a remaining few who could probably add a piece or two to the mosaic but it’s not worth the effort for me to sort it out with them. I rarely see them and the collateral subjects about my father that I’d have to endure are just too much for me.

       My father had auburn hair and blue eyes. When I watch the newly discovered by me, Mad Men series, I see my dad in all those guys. I was a child of the Mad Men generation. I think watching the first season of Mad Men was the motivation I needed to finally write something about my father. When I recollect my father’s business interests in tandem with his sartorial bearing I come up with Don Draper meets Tony Soprano. Suffice it to say that my father had interests in businesses that involved lots of cash transactions.

My dad was selling real estate and tending bar on the weekends at the Elks Club when he met my mom. Here’s the bartender on casual Saturday I suppose. I’ve speculated about my genetic predisposition for clothes horsiness and I’d wear this fuzzy diced shirt of dad’s in a heartbeat.

Here’s my father and his best buddy 

Russell Blackmon at Ocean Drive beach many years before I was even thought of. Russell was our small town hero. Life Guard, dirt track racer and fellow bon vivant with my daddy. And this photo sums up my father’s affinity for the beach. Bathing trunks clad Russell is fully engaged in solar fun. My father is not. 

He’s there for one reason only…because my mother wanted to be there. 

Another photo shows the girls sitting on beach towels in those Betty Draper bathing suits. My father hated the beach. That’s why he’s still dressed…in a cotton lisle knit-shirt and probably Bermuda shorts of some sort. Weejuns…maybe. High and tight haircut, trad glasses and understated leather watch strap. That was my dad.

Russell lived for a couple of decades after my dad died.  His wife, one of the gals sitting on the beach while dad and Russell strolled, still lives around the corner from my mom. She does smocking on little girl’s dresses. She did this one for my daughter, Lily.

My earliest memories of my dad involve these heavy wingtip shoes, whiskey and an ottoman. He’d come home from work and plop down in a club chair with at least one cocktail already under his belt. My older sister and I would climb up on him hug him like little people are want to do to their parents.

He was very affectionate and really loved us no doubt...but we had a job to do. He’d direct us down to the ottoman for our nightly task of unlacing his wingtips and at least for me, having that shoe drop on the floor upon release. That shoe seemed heavier than me and the wax laces—I can remember my little fingers trying to unleash that heavy ass shoe…untying that waxy rope of a shoelace. I’m not certain I could tie my own shoes at that age.

            I remember my dad in two outfits…either pajamas or a suit. The man did not recreate…he couldn’t. He was either working or playing cards or doing whatever. He’d install us at the beach, load my mother up with cash and he’d split. The man was absolutely one dimensional…all business and of course, in an era where if you kept everyone at home well-heeled and you hired others to do everything else, all was considered good. My father was nocturnal and the man could be found in one of about four places in our town of twenty thousand people. Cards and cocktails were his currency.

Here’s a grainy old photograph of me and my dad. I’m clutching a ball in one hand and a dollar bill in the other.  My dad’s ever present cigarette’s been switched to his left hand as he tentatively dangles a fish. One thing’s for certain, some of the farm help caught the fish on behalf of my dad, for me. My dad didn’t get dirty and he damned sure didn’t get fishy. Straw hat, cigarette and for a moment—a fish.

My father died on a Sunday. Sixteen year old boys, who have their driver’s licenses for daytime driving and an MG Midget in which to do so, are generally disengaged from their parents. My father had been ill, dramatically so but he’d made a turn and was to be discharged the previous Wednesday. I spoke to him on the phone that Wednesday morning. He asked me if my MG was running ok…I’d just had the clutch repaired…again. I told him that it was indeed and I hurried off the phone. Surely I had to be somewhere and besides, they were bringing him home that afternoon and I’d see him then. I never spoke to him again. As a matter of fact, he never spoke to anyone again.

            I didn’t really miss my dad for the next fifteen years. Or at least I didn’t think I did.  I was blessed with some mechanism that shielded me from the loss I suppose. I navigated the teen years reasonably and my twenties were go-go great. And then I woke up one day when I was thirty years old and I missed my old man. I missed having the conversations that other grown men and women had with their fathers. There were a few instances where other adults, my peers, spoke of their fathers and it gut-punched me. One guy said the simplest but most admirable thing about his dad. He had seen the world, his father hadn’t. He’d gained gobs of graduate education. His dad had none. But about his father he said, “I could just sit and talk with my father all day. He is the greatest person I know.” I think I was sick with jealousy for a week. 

         My father never saw me do anything, never attended anything, and never once threw me a ball. Another friend said about her recently deceased father… “I became a PharmD. because my father was a PharmD. He was a brilliant, brilliant man and I’d live the rest of my life under a bridge just to have another day with him.”

            And my best buddy John and his retired Navy diesel sub officer, CIA operative dad can sit on the porch drinking bourbon in fellowship for an hour…without saying a word. But they are engaged with each other. My buddy Michael remembers his dad buying him his first adult sized suit at Paul Stuart… “My dad bought all his suits at Paul Stuart. My first grown up suit came from Paul Stuart- a 2-button navy Southwick.  When I think of my dad I think of those suits with the smell of Aramis cologne in them.  Weird how that brings me back. After my dad died in '88 - I never really shopped there much.” 

I’d give my left arm to have something other than vague, unhappy memories of my dad.

So dad here are a few things that I’d like to update you on. I call my daughter Monkey...the same thing you called me. She’s named for mom and she’s the prettiest of all your grandchildren. You’d love her so much and I bet she could get your heavy ass wingtip shoes off without much trouble. And she’s funnier than I ever was. I know that you loved us but what I’m trying to do with your granddaughter is love her differently. I want her as an adult, to say the same things about me that my friends said about their fathers. And I want to be around to hear her say it. That’s why I drink slightly less booze than you did.

            Mom quit smoking. Something you never did. But it took a mild heart attack twenty years ago to do the trick. By the way, they cost about ten bucks a pack now. I can just hear you say something about ten bucks “being the current cost of pleasure” or whatever. And there’s a show called Mad Men. It’s about smoking and drinking. You’d relate.

            And I heard you call me a “little fucker” when you had to come home from the office and take me to buy new shoes. I was six. I know you weren’t frustrated with me per se but I realized it wasn’t a compliment when you said...“he’s the toughest little fucker on shoes I’ve ever seen.” It’s ok dad. I now have an ass-load of shoes and the clothes horse in you would want a pair of each for yourself.

            And yes. I was the one who threw the brick that hit your’54 Corvette. I didn’t mean to but you can bet that I wasn’t gonna ‘fess up. “Little fucker” would have been a complimentary warm up compared to what I would have had coming after you caught me.

            

         I’ve made and lost more money than you but that’s ok too. I’m still here to make more and I’ve learned something you never did. It isn’t as important to me as it was to you. I’d rather forgo a billable day to make certain that your granddaughter sees me on the front row of whatever event it happens to be. Because that event, at that moment, represents a memory making opportunity for me and your granddaughter…both your Monkeys.

So Dad…Onward…In your shadow.

Reader Comments

·         What an amazing and heartfelt story. I lost my dad when I was 19 and I identify with a lot of what you wrote.

·         Thank you so much for this story, and may God bless you. My dad suffered a heart attack and two strokes two years ago. He's still around but not who he used to be, and this story reminds me to value each moment because you never know when things will change.

·         Great story. I mean it. Really touching, and heartfelt, and focused. Excellent and thoughtful writing.

·         A wonderful story. You made me ask myself again, why do we compete with our Fathers? My father had the same experiences as yours did. Went to Fort Bragg, hated being a tobacco farmer, and never wanted to come back. My father is still with me thankfully. I had to read this through twice. Are you sure we are not related? Busy working dad, mom that pampered us, and, in my case, one really sweet 1976 MG Midget, sunburst gold.

·         I've never commented on a story before but this is the best I've ever read. Simply beautiful, thank you.

·         Your lovely story brought tears to my eyes. My last conversation with my dad was also on the phone. He'd encouraged me not to cancel a long-planned trip as his cancer was beaten; he was just going to do a round of proactive chemo. We'd seen the Paris apartment he lived in as a teen in the '30's, and were headed to Italy. "Go straight to Florence. It's one of my favorite cities in the world." A week later, for no real reason, I cut the trip short and headed home. Got here just in time to kiss him goodbye for the last time. (And that is my "There is a God" moment.) Thanks for sharing and reminding me how much I still love my dad.

·         Just lovely... I lost my dad three years ago, and still regret not learning all from him that I could have.

·         You hit the nail on the head when you wrote what you would give just to have a conversation with a lost parent. That really resonated. I better call my living parent soon.

·         Young man, you need to start charging admission for masterpieces like this. I'd pay the ask just to get a look at that palimpsest double portrait you put together, very powerful.

·         I'm crying at work over this. Beautifully written.

·         Tears in my eyes. Held out until the last couple sentences, damn you. We spent yesterday with my father. At one point we were talking about calendars, and he told us about how the English and European calendars used to be 10 days apart. It's always like that with him, the retired professor. We said, "Dad, it's amazing how you know all these things." I'm making a mental note of trying to hear more of the things my dad knows that no one else does. Very few people that I read online write as well as you do. Very few. And some of the people that I read in print fall short too.

·         This was tough to read. Can only imagine the struggle to write it. Filled with so much "if-only". Beautiful piece.

·         The one saving grace would seem to be your determination to be the best dad you know how to be--with little or no guidance to draw from. Your little golden hair...a lucky monkey.

·         I'm sad that your Dad never got the pleasure of knowing the Dad and man you grew up to be.

·         Outstanding and powerful. This story bored deep into the collective soul of all of us men...as evidenced by the comments above. I am inspired.

·         I'm so glad I read this at home. I had to take three breaks to wipe my eyes. I lost my step-father in 1998. I was blessed to be there for his last breath with the priest, mother and my sister's surrounding him. I will remember those moments vividly for as long as I live. It was like heaven brushed up against us as he drifted peacefully home. Thank you for opening your heart and putting it all out there. You remind me how lucky I am to still have my Daddy. Your daughter is blessed to have you.

·         I'm lucky my father is still alive - I'm lucky he is not far away - but only in the past few years did I realize how lucky I was to have spent so much time with my father and that he went out of his way to make himself available for me, and to be a part of so many memories -shenanigans and fun times. 

·         There are few people writing for pleasure, not money, that are as good as you - this cements my thesis. 

·         Astonishingly, achingly bittersweet and lovely. Whenever you do decide that traveling here, there, and everywhere to do the job you love becomes too much for you, your "real" career is self-evident, dear sir. You write. Because you have to, you want to, and you DO.  You remind me through your word choices, and your amazing attitude, that we all can be better than what we may have thought. Looking forward, but not afraid to look in the rear view mirror, either. Bravo.

·         I'm obviously late coming to this but I add my praise for your prose. My old man is still around and we get along better now than we ever have; 'twas not always thus & this story, like all good writing, allows one to recognize what has passed and bear witness to the present. Thanks for the great story.

·         The people who really love us are never gone. They live on in our hearts. I was one of those people who could talk to my father for hours on end about every subject under the sun. But I lost my mother at 21 two months before my wedding when she was my best friend in the world. So I have experienced both sides of the best relationship you can have with a parent only one got cut short. Like you, I feel that stab of pain and jealousy listening to those my age talk of outings, trips, and just plain rap sessions with their still living parents. Still and all I'm happy for the time I did have with each for there are those that haven't known either. Thanks for a great story.

·         That is such a lovely tribute to your dad. I was 24 when my daddy died and I long to have 'adult' conversations with him. I am sure my life would be much different now if I had his thoughtful advice to guide me.

·         What struck me about this recollection of your father was how your upbringing has influenced your goals as a parent. Based on your words above you are indeed on the right track, lucky daughter of yours.

·         You amaze me...and inspire me. I've thought for some time about writing a story about my daddy...he passed away the summer before my sophomore year in college. He didn't smoke or drink or run around (although I must admit that one or two things have made me wonder about the running around part over the years), but I can't watch an episode of Mad Men without thinking of him every time.

·         

         Quite some time has gone by since I first read this story. I typed out a comment at the time but could not send it. I saved this as a "favorite" piece...I have a treasured stash of gorgeous writings that I never tire of referring back to. Aside from the topic setting my heart on fire, your writing is some of the most luminous I have been fortunate to discover. I can only say that my experience with my own father was only slightly similar to yours...I lived with him and my mother until I could escape to college in 1971 at age 18...then she left him and he wandered away...my last contact with him was the summer of 1983...I don't know if he is still alive. Although I was his firstborn, I was never "daddy's little girl"...but oh, how I wanted to be.

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

Ok...A Text Reply from This Morning

Thx. for tapping in.  Ok is relative, right?

So I'm not ok. By my definition. But it's good because I'm present and in the moment and dialed-in to what I deem not ok.

And there's a woman here. Still sleeping. So the monastic silence and palpable loneliness of being here by myself is gone.

I'm not lonely right now. Even though the house is monastically silent as she sleeps.

Because of the knowing.

Because knowing that she's here creates a different kind of silence. It's the peaceful and nourishing kind.  

The kind that allows me not to fear being alone with my thoughts.

The woman is sixteen. And she's learning to drive a stick shift. Fearfully. But that's ok because I'm right beside her.

She has curly hair and a suntan. And she starts her second summer at The Joffrey dance camp in New York next week.

We got rotisserie chicken and black beans and rice and cucumber salad last night. From the Peruvian couple who mind their little place ten hours a day, six days a week. They always seem more than ok.

And we ate it together sitting on the floor. In her room. Binge watching old Grey's Anatomy episodes.

So the eight minutes that I've taken to write this text has led me to see that I am. Ok.

Ok. 

Part Two: Birmingham Alabama—In Alden Pebble Grain

Well to be honest I’m not quite ready for part two of my Alden Pebble Grain—Birmingham story. And I promise there will be more about haberdashery-esque observations and less ramblings about Birmingham in the tumultuous civil rights sixties.

But I’ve still got a little more of that stuff that I need to purge from my little system. The Mountain Brook Club and the Country Club of Birmingham and what I’ll call the Angst of the Mules must be addressed briefly in the next installment. Stay tuned.

What I am ready to talk about is Father’s Day. My hope is that all of you fathers in my sphere and all who comment on my blog and tumblr drivel—many of you who’ve become great friends—had a stellar day yesterday.

LFG and her mother came over to CasaMinimusBethesda and we had a nice dinner. Outside. Swathed in Deep Woods Off with DEET. And Miss Reilley, Lily’s Cavalier King Charles Princess was here in full form. She is forbidden to have table scraps. That’s code for “ADG gave her wee bits of grilled NY Strip steak and a lot of it." Yep.

I’m not sure I used my Father’s Day gift properly. LFG's mama was a hollerin' and suggesting that we call the fire department. 

And let me tell you. All of you huggers who think that DEET is the devil, well you must not have the high ass caliber skeeters that live here in my patch. These bad boys bit thru my heavy starched linen shirt last night. I think it’s a combination of the predictable skeeter insatiability  and a special siren song pull of knowing that my particular sweet meat awaits them. Otherwise, I just don’t think a skeeter would risk damaging their fencing foil snouts trying to punch through my stiff linen barrier. Shut the _____.

LFG and her mom. My baby is anything but a baby anymore.

And finally, the greatest gift that I could have received yesterday came from a friend—blood brother caliber friend—who started out as a client of mine. Almost bought tears to my eyes. Bill is navigating his journey with a level of grace and gratitude that can be a lesson for us all. He has two elementary school age little girls and an incredible wife. Bill and his wife are lovely inside and out because of the energy of sweet kindness that illuminates from within. Bill’s wife has metastatic breast cancer and is now declining further treatment. They are living moment by moment in gratitude for...The Moment.

The Moment. Folks, it’s really all we have.

Onward. With loving kindness. And wearing Hogg Howell GTH Kilim shoes. Just to piss off LFG's mom. 

ADG-II

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