Wanderings

The Dune region that curves around the bottom of Lake Michigan is a source of fascination and wonderment.

Geographically, it's magical--make that spiritual in my scheme of natural religion.

I've learned it's the axis mundi of North American, where major ecosystems converge. It's no wonder that it was a labratory for modern ecological studies in the early twentieth century.

Its history and its lore, along with surviving remnants of days gone by, inspired a romance for one of the most unique regions I've ever experienced.

Ellie and I often travel through, yes through, Gary to Michigan City on US 12 & 20. For some 2o years a favorite byway stop was Andershocks in the country outside of Portage--a rambling, ramshackle farmers market, nursery, and flea market. It was as authentic as it gets--an unpretentious remnant of what once was. In the autumn there were great wooden bins of gnarly apples, piles of pumpkins, and tables of ornamental gourds and Indian corn from Indiana farms. Several years ago Andershocks closed. (Nothing lasts forever.)

In its final days, among the forlorn rows of neglected plants were little pots of "wandering jew." I bought one for a quarter and have managed to keep it alive since then from successive cuttings.

Yesterday afternoon, the sun sluicing in my kitchen widow illuminated the plant's purple leaves. I remembered Andershocks with the sweet pain of nostalgia for day trips to Michigan City and back.

Those day trips around Lake Michigan are metaphors for untold day trips we'd taken as diversion and recreation in Vermont and Upstate New York, Quebec, Ohio and neighboring Pennsylavania and West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Hey Baby...

It was the spring of 1961. I was thirteen, feeling self-important. The world vibrated, the taut string of my being resonated in sympathy.

Dad took me on a Saturday shopping trip to Chester PA to visit men's clothing stores. The downtown was still viable. Shops lined the main streets—Market Street and Edgmont Avenue. It seemed busy—urban, a little dangerous.

We parked in a lot adjacent to the meandering Chester Creek and walked a wobbly pedestrian bridge to the downtown businesses. The few times I’d walked the bridge before, I’d been afraid of tumbling into the river.

We were walking on the shaded side of Market Street. Sun shone on the other side, bouncing off store windows. The light was thin, but bright, The air was chilled but warm where the sun shone. Down the sunny side of the street a throaty convertible, the top down, drove slowly, deliberately. A driver with slick, long black hair had one arm on the seat, the other on the steering wheel. He claimed a progressing slice of the world. The car radio blared a song of the day:

"Hey, hey hey baby!/I want to know if you'll be my girl/Hey, hey hey baby!/I want to know if you'll be my girl."

He words echoed, in my mind, if not off the buildings.

Crossing the foot bridge back to the car, I’d forgotten old fears.

God, I felt alive, that spring day when I was thirteen.

Sartorial Splendor

Father Clint was a fastidious dresser and benefited from Mother Mary's laundry and ironing skills. When he ran the storehouse at Houdry Products, a research and development plant in Linwood PA, he wore a freshly ironed pair of khaki pants, a starched long sleeved white shirt, and tie every day of work. He was a good looking man, always slim and well-groomed.

Brother Clint was a high school fashion plate, circa 1957. He attended a city high school, P. S. DuPont. He worked in an Acme super market, earning money to pay for his own car and buy clothes.

I didn't care much about my appearance until sixth grade. One day I looked around at classmates and realized that my customary khaki pants and white tee shirt didn't favorably compare to what my middle class peers were wearing.

I asked for new clothes and rather than an excursion to the usual J. C. Penney and Sears Roebuck stores, I had a special trip to Wilmington Dry Goods on Market Street in downtown Wilmington. Perhaps brother Clint shopped there, but he probably shopped more often at the tonier Wanamakers or Strawbridge and Clothiers in Claymont's Merchandise Mart where his Acme was located.

Wilmington Dry Goods occupied an old fashioned building--several stories, cavernous floors, high ceilings, unvarnished worn wooden floors, the merchandise in great wooden bins. The men's floor had a pleasing aroma of wool and cotton, not an expensive smell but more like a textile mill. I carefully looked through the bins and left with a couple pair of pants and patterned shirts, a pair of rough wool sweaters that pulled out of shape with wear, and a brown-striped sport coat that was the love of my life.

From junior high through high school each year brought a new trend. One year pants had a buckle in the back, the next year two flaps covered the back pockets. In my senior year "wheat jeans" were de rigeur. Dirty bucs were followed by white bucs were followed by desert boots were followed by Spaulding saddle shoes. Athletic shoes had to be Converse; however, one year they had to be white low cuts, the next black low cuts. A season of white high tops gave way to a season of black high tops, the latter were known as "black Cons."

I suffered my parent's frugality. Even when I played junior high and senior high junior varsity basketball they were too frugal to spring the extra few dollars for Converse sneakers. I wore low cut Keds in junior high and P.F. Flyers in high school.

Throughout my school days there were a few constants. Penny loafers (Bass Weejuns) had preppie cachet. (My loafers came from Hanover Shoes.) White wool socks accompanied the Weejuns.

When brother Clint married in my last year of junior high Dad and I shopped at Robert Hall for suits. ("Robert Hall this season, will show you the reason: low over head, low overhead.") I selected a greenish tan suit from the long racks of sized and color arranged suits. (I've tended to choose brighter colors.)

Madras sport coats were the rage in my senior year. I bought a muted gray, black, and red plaid model at Wilmington Dry Goods. My yearbook picture shows me wearing it.

Whatever I wore, it was always spotlessly clean and immaculately pressed. My shirts hung in starched order in my closet.

I had my own taste, too. I was particularly fond of demi-boots sold by Hanover Shoes. I called them cherry boots because of their oxblood colored leather. They polished to a rich sheen.

Over the years my sartorial splendor has been enriched by circumstance, beginning with Wilmington Dry Goods. In high school a friend's mother drove us to the Eagle Shirt factory in Quakertown PA. During graduate school my taste for fancy shirts was indulged at a Hathaway Shirt outlet in Burlington VT.

When attending McGill the Metro stopped between Eaton's and the Bay (Hudson Bay Company), the major downtown Montreal department stores. I prowled for bargains. My prize purchases came from Eaton's, incuding two resplendent, bell-bottomed cotton suits, one mustard yellow the other a celery green. (I had a gray, bell bottomed suit custom made at Eaton's for my 1973 graduation. I wore it with cherry-colored slip-ons with a raised heel and a grayish tie decorated with mushrooms.)

In Youngstown I received a "professional discount" of 10% off from Higbee's on Federal Plaza. Higbee's was struggling to survive and had great markdowns on men's wear. I particularly liked a whitish wool, two button model that made me look very elegant.

Most recently I've shopped a Bachrach Outlet at the North Riverside Mall, where I've found Canadian suits and sport coats, Italian cobbled shoes, and a variety of dress shirts.

When we lived in Canada, 1970-1976, Ellie sewed. I persuaded her to make me three major items: a green velour caftan to wear around the house; a nubby pink, yes, pink, jacket something like a sport coat; and a beigish trench coat.

The two Clints were my early role models regarding clothes. What I wore, how I looked has always mattered, at least since my first foray to Wilmington Dry Goods. And shopping for clothes, particularly to find bargains, has provided pleasure and adventure.