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

My Mama-Socks-And Hoping to Die at 75

Look at these great socks. Princeof Wales Check—Prince of Wales Plaid—Glen Plaid—Glenurquhart Check—Glenurquhart Plaid. 

When was the last time you saw a pair of these? Never. That's right.

Seems that there are lots of names for this pattern. And the nuancified, overwrought cataracts that differentiate these definitions/characterizations are tedious. Honestly, who gives a sh_t? It’s a pattern just jaunty enough to dodge boredom and variable enough in its repitition to sidestep redundancy. 

Domesticated Wildness. Think about it. As long as the Glen is woven within reasonable color combinations and scales, it conveys a rather civilized and, especially in our current world of slovenly dress, cleaned up—buttoned up—casual formality.

Yet blow the scale up and contrive it with other outta scale caca and what have you? A damn clown outfit.

Now don't get me wrong. You can play with color and scale to a fair degree and still avoid clowndom. Todd Hogg Howell teeters on the edge with his overcoat.

Here’s another example of what happens when you take traditional patterns and make 'em fuzzified beyond good measure. This abusive goat rodeo of pattern inbreeding broke out in houndstooth and there's nothing domesticated about this wildness. It flat out jumped the fence and started shamelessly licking itself...in front of everyone, right in the middle of the road. Best thing that could happen here is for a car to come run over it mid-lick. Lordy. Just wait till you see what I do with the Glen hose. Shut up.

Kind of a Domesticated Wildness this Glen thang is. Yep. That’s it. Sorta like the Beatles’ North American debut strategy. Domesticated Wildness. Jackets and ties on the Ed Sullivan show. None of that hippie ass beatnik-alated kit. Suits. And ties. Yet accompanied by head bobbing mop top hair that American parents found off putting and American girls found irresistible.

Here's the Beatles' third appearance on Ed Sullivan's show. See for yourself. 

And Chelsea boots. Not those usual shoddings that accompany suits intended for the City, Church’s cap toed whatevers from their home country. Not for these boys. Chelsea Boots—boots that conveyed keeping your daughter out past curfew, having been let into the Colony Room Club in Soho because your dad knows Francis Bacon. Oh, and their pants were ever so slightly slim. Not tight. Not in a pecker protrusion way. Remember, this was 1963 and the Jim Morrison leather britches potato in the front routine woulda never made it onstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater. But their pants were just so-so enough  to just piss off dads and intrigue dad’s little girl. Nice boys but watch them. They'll shag your sister.

How did I get this far off course when trying to extol the whateverishness of Glen Plaid? I’ll get back to it but final thang about the Beatles’ strategy. History assigns its inception to their first manager, Brian Epstein. “Epstein took the raw energy of generational conflict and made it acceptable.” The caged heat at the Beatles' Shea Stadium concert offers evidence of their strategy's efficacy.

And let me also clear up something about the genesis of one of the names of this pattern. The Prince of Wales Check or Plaid. It’s been assigned to both Princes…later to become Edwards VII and VIII.

Some are more prone to assign it to the Duke of Windsor but Bertie wore it long before that little whippersnapper Nazi understudy took it on.

And others have worn it in fine form. Not the least of whom is my sartorial brother in peaked lapelled contrivances, fellow drummer Charlie Watts.

Oh, and I met up with Charlie the other day on Savile Row. I kid you not. 

I’ll write a proper story about it someday soon.

And here I am several decades ago in a somewhat tame version of the glen whatever pattern. Rather attenuated compared to my later fuzziness. Same with the woman.

“Oh no, ADG, punter of all things fuzzy, the ONLY version of this pattern that’s truly, authentically, artisanally, curitorially the Prince of Wales check is the blue/brown combination”. Well let me just head off at the pass you sartorially autodidactilated, no life, still living with your mama, smartass anonymous commenters. Save it. We don’t care. And by the way, that particular combination is the ugliest version in the line-up. Go ask mama for an advance on your allowance and get yourself an outfit made from this legacy version, ok? And be sure to ask for the Jethro Bodine, Thom Browne shrunk up pattern. It’ll be sick. Shut the ….

Bottom line is that the assignment of this pattern to either of the Princes of Wales, later Kings Edward has been wrong all along. Truth is that the pattern was named in honor of Prince’s 1978 Wales tour. Prince and his hoochie coochie retinue played forty-three concerts in twenty days. “It was my most rewarding tour” said Prince. “The travel time from one concert venue to the next was easy-peasy”. I still can’t believe that Prince actually said “easy-peasy”.

Ok, I’ve done my duty regarding sartorial subjects. Seems that this blog used to be about such things. But I now want to point you to Zeke Emanuel’s article in the Atlantic, Why I Hope toDie at 75. And please, if anything pisses you off (other than the aforementioned rant about the Prince of Wales pattern caca) to the point of wanting to rage against me with a comment, please read Zeke’s article first.

My mother has now been back in the ICU for a week. And  my brother and I this weekend—our fifty-seven year old sister, a critical care nurse by training, is too incapacitated amidst her own struggle with lupus to either come and help us or offer objective input—are discussing the discontinuation of antibiotics for my mother’s intractable infections and working out the logistics of getting her back in the home that she’s been running for fifty-one years—the last year, from a hospital bed in the den. Hospice and palliative care are the only tactics we are willing to now discuss.

This is my sister and me a year and a half ago...saying goodbye to our mom the first time. I'm tired of saying goodbye. And we know that we aren't special or unique in this journey with our mom. Thousands of other siblings are amidst the same right now, all over the world. But we are exhausted. My mother has been toying with death for a year and a half now. I’m tired to the bone and weary of this eighteen month roller coaster of emotional whack-a-mole. The toll that it’s taken on me, physically, spiritually, emotionally and financially is alarming. I’ve never been pulled in so many directions simultaneously by forces that are so intensely demanding. And the guilt associated with under delivering on each demand has been paralysing. (My reasons for using the British spelling for paralyzing are twofold. One is that I just returned from England. The other is in honor of those Americans who affect in their writing, some connection to England by using “colour” instead of “color” and say herb—like “Herb Alpert” instead of herb—like “urb”. Here’s the deal—unless you have at least on British parent or you went to school in England for more than one year, stop with the Anglo Sycophancy. I gave up the practice as soon as my Aunt Tootie and Roxanne Burgess called me on it. So now I’m calling you out. Stop it.) 

Ok, back to my mama. I say the guilt “has been” because I’m over it. At least I am trying to be. I didn’t drop everything this past week and run to South Carolina to participate in the vigil yet again. I can’t back burner my life here to do it this time. My mom and I are rock solid and she knows that I’ve been there in service to her as much as physically possible over this last year and a half. I’m suffering from sympathy fatigue and I’m exasperated at the thought of selecting the next appropriate emotional state to check into only to have the universe once again tell me that I’ve selected the wrong damn one. Again.

Modern medical interventions don’t always prolong life. They forestall death. And the interim between what was a decent quality of life and  the reaper’s rap on the door is a rather hellish stretch of ennui. Nobody loves their mother more than me and my sibs. But if we are brave enough to disentangle ourselves from the tentacles of maudlin sentiment, my sibs and I should without guilt, face up to the reality that our mom should have died a year ago.

Had we been citizens of Germany or several other very countries who offer better overall population based health management than we do in the States, my mother would have never survived the initial incident a year and a half ago. Why? Because independent of advanced directives, they would have never put a feeding tube down her nose. We don't do a good job of having healthy dialogue about end of life issues here in the States. We don't do death very well. Countries that have a euthanasia option utilize it, surprisingly to me, not that often. But what the option allows is the platform for more candid discussions regarding end of life decisions. I'm not advocating it for the States. I'm just saying that we need to rethink how we manage the life journey.

And I can’t tell you what a tempest of every describable emotion I’ve had to work through to be able to say out loud and put in print my belief that it would have been better if my mom had passed on back then. I’m getting nauseated just typing this even though I’m resolute in my opinion. Why? Because my mom and I have had some lovely and humbly instructive moments over the last eighteen months. Laughing, eating barbecue, reminiscing, being humbled—both of us as I’ve put her on and off the bedpan and wiped her. But the cost has been too high by any and every measure one could use to assess the upside.

I’ve been to church more times than most of you who read my stuff. So please—don’t offer me that ethereal hall pass/permission slip bullshit that supposedly gets us off the hook for having to answer such tough existential questions. “It’s just not in our hands, Dust. There are higher powers at work here and we as mere mortals won’t know why things play out like they do till we get there.”  Folks, it’s the god given tools and intellect that allow mere mortals to perpetuate in the name of humanity, this cowardly and discourteous end of life shepherding process so don’t hand me the bullshit about how we are not in control of this journey. Yes, you can believe in a higher power and not subjugate your common sense as a condition of belief. 

The shepherds, or at least the committee that wrote the Standard Operating Procedures for the end of life shepherding process, should be fired.  And if after this; my admonishment to you, the mind numbingly naive members of the doctrinally impertinent, you still insist on offering me solace along the god’s in control lines, I’ll drive to your house—I don’t care if you live in Outer Vulgaria—and deploy my pimp hand or maybe even a closed fist, right in your pie hole. Until you've wiped pee from the maternal conduit through which you emerged...until you've locked eyes with your mother while doing so and realized that in her eyes there's shame and in yours, embarrassment, don't even try to school me. I mean right now. I can hurt you.

Let me tell you, if anyone is going to get “there” it’s my mom. And five gets ten that both of her husbands and her eight brothers and sisters already in residence up “there” are going to say “What the hell took you so long?” And her answer should be… “Well I was more than ready eighteen months ago but the United States of America’s Medical Industrial Complex wasn’t quite yet finished fiddling with me, my wallet, and the physical-financial-spiritual reservoirs of my kids. Oh, but for all those costs, I was able to dictate to Dusty the recipes for his favorite things that I’ve cooked for him these last fifty years. And I taught him to make stove top white trash cornbread in a cast iron skillet. You know he always did love that. Oh, and the last time he was home we shelled butterbeans".

Yes I’m exhausted and frustrated and deciding whether or not to select door two or three of the bereavement-depression-letting go game. But either way, I’ll be wearing some kick ass socks.

Onward. Two  Glenurquhart adorned steps forward. Three back. And listening wholeheartedly to Zeke Emanuel.

ADG2

Saturday Morning—Trad Nothings and Coffman Somethings

LFG picked out my little British Racing Green Mini Cooper-S convertible almost two years ago and it’s been a blast to drive. Really. Would it serve better as a second car? A weekend roundabout and a tool-around buggy for the back roads around Middleburg and The Plains? I believe that’s when it best preens its Go-Kart capabilities. Otherwise, it’s a bit small for a daily driver. Good news is that I generally don’t drive far and wide when I’m home. The car is just not that practical.

And God only knew that I would be driving my Mini back and forth home to Florence with the regularity that I have since February 3^rd. I’ve been home more since February 3^rd than in the previous three years combined. My mom, by the way…the eighty-three year old gal who was on a respirator and whose departure was announced hourly for the first month…the gal who one of the most skilled and communicative surgeons…the guy who did emergency surgery on her at two in the morning, said wouldn’t come off the table alive…spent a half-hour outside of the rehab hospital soaking up the sunshine the other day. She also shot my baby brother the “bird.” I have much to share about my mom and this odyssey that we’ve all been on with her. I think I need to start another blog to take on the gravity of it though. Stay tuned…or not. I don’t care. 

I stole most of these photos from Daddy's and Dextros's tumblrs. Without permission. Shut the...

And this used to be a blog about clothes. You remember, right? Texture, color, fuzziness and whatnot. So why don’t I throw sumpin on this drivel pile that’d be true to what I used to drone about with some regularity. Let me tell you about Coffman’s Menswear in Greenville, N.C. and my two buddies who preen around the joint with country-ass aplomb. I’ve been humbled by and amazed at the eclectic goods and high caliber tastiness of Coffman’s. That's Daddy, above. He's fuzzy even when he ain't feeling well.

Daddy, the sartorial fuzzier than me to the point of no-return hirsute-tootiness and his understudy, whose real name is Hog Farmer John but who I’ve dubbed Dextrose are the collective Forrest Gump of Eastern Carolina haberdashdom. Dextrose in his Tom Wolfe-Thumbian getup above, dates a hottie by the way. Shut up.

Let me touch on the humbled by Coffman’s thing. Karma demands that I admit to getting years ago, way above my raisin’. I’m the progeny of Scotch-Irish Carolinians who spent the first century over here scrounging like most of ‘em did, eking out an agrarian subsistence. But in the mid nineteenth century, tobacco changed everything. And there was money in that crop, let me tell you. Big money. So both sides of my family became tobacco farmers way back then. I’ve told the story about my dad swearing from moment one that he’d get the hell off the farm and he did. And this set the stage for me to fly even farther from the nest and see the world and get a fair amount of high falutin education and to get, well, high-minded.

So when I began to see tumblr snippets here and there about this joint called Coffman’s, I was skeptical  After all, I’ve spent time and money in most of the pantheon caliber haberdasheries remaining in the States and quite a few in Europe. Greenville, N.C.? Really? Are there that many hog and peanut farmers left with the dosh to pop for such things? And who the hell down there has the taste level to appreciate it even if they could afford it? Tobacco by the way…ain’t what it used to be. The Department of Agriculture pays us not to grow it. I get a check once a year—unfortunately it’s divided among a zillion cousins—for about enough dough to make a down payment on a pair of Cleverley’s. Shut up.

Might my high-mindedness be considered reverse provincialism? How stupid can I really be? Greenville, N.C. is a healthcare destination…teaching hospitals and a medical school with great repute. I suppose that being so close to Duke and all its marquee caliber healthcare provision causes one to not think of Greenville as a healthcare town per se. And there’s East Carolina University. Bottom line is that it was pretty pig headed of me to write off Greenville and Coffman’s as sartorial wasteland. My hometown of Florence can’t carry Greenville’s water. And Florence hasn’t had a decent haberdashery in over twenty-five years now.

My first purchase from Daddy and Hog Farmer-D was my 2013 Bill’s GTH togs. I still hadn’t set foot in the store but I figured that if these guys could source such thangs, I’d just phone order my damn self a pair of size 33 extra charming older than fifty-years Peter Pan man britches. But then I stopped by to see the boys and the store when I went home just after Christmas. The joint is legit.

So I stopped in again to see Daddy and Dextrose on the way down to Florence the other week and pounced on a couple more tasty thangs. Wispy thin linen pocket square was a keeper for certain. There was something about its attenuated delicateness that whispered—yes—whispered…“take my ass home…take my ass home.” And amazingly, it whispered it in a three-in-the-morning, Roxanne Burgess, circa 1980 at the Kappa Alpha house voice. So who was I to say no?

And then Daddy hoodwinked me into believing that there was some kinda legitimacy to this Carolina Tartan come-on. My people only began wearing burlap kilts from feed sacks back in 1893. We ain’t got no tartan. I remain skeptical about the tartan legitimacy but not about the belt. I wore it every day all day all week and am probably gonna wear it when I hit the mean streets of D.C. tonight. Shut up.

Last but not least is this Peter Millar linen fuzz thang. I’m set with solid color linen shirts but this one had my name on it. Well not literally but you know what I mean. I’ve never owned a Peter Millar anything and don’t see myself becoming a devotee but this one had balance. Balance you ask? Yep. Fuzzy enough without being over the top GTH in a Liberty of London kinda way. If you need further clarification on what I’m conveying here, please, ask someone else.

But these cats do even tastier things. After seeing Daddy’s horizontal contrivances from the Carmel atelier of Robert Talbot, I had him cook one up for me. We simply did a stock size with a tweak or two and it came out perfect. Over the fuzzy top, actually. The ADG jury remains out regarding how the Carmel chemise will ultimately compare to what Gambert turns out in N.J. for Flusser and Rykken but I can say that they’ve got Individualized beat all to be damned.

But that ain’t all, folks. There’s also the subject of popovers. Yes, popovers…the quirky trad throwback shirt that’s rare these days…rare at least from the perspective of finding one that’s “right.” I discovered one in the trad store that I worked in during college and had no idea what it was. It had slipped behind a display counter and had hovered there between the counter and the wall for over twenty years. I think nowadays people call something like this new-old stock. You know, like the togs we all went crazy for at O’Connell’s three summers ago. 

A few months ago, Daddy started showing off  popover swatches. The boy is rapier efficient with his iPad. He shoots a few photos of swatches and before you know it, guys like little ADG are American Expressing themselves. Popping all over. Shut up.

So let me close out this drivel and get hopping. I’m Gotham bound in the morning and then over to New Jersey on Monday afternoon for two delightfully billable days. Then it’s back home to take delivery of a five-thousand dollar HVAC system for Casa Minimus. There’s no joy in spending 5k on something that admittedly makes you feel comfortable yet isn’t something you can take photos of and blog stories about it saying …  “look at me…look at me…I spent five grand on this sh_t.” But wait till you see what the Coffman's boys are making me from this card. Bam.

Onward. Still holding on to my mama. Humbled. Horizontalled. And Popped.

ADG II