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By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff writer
When I stopped for gas the other morning, a good friend asked me if I “had to dress up” every day.
“I thought you’d be more comfortable in overalls,” she said.
While I do not work under any official dress guidelines, the vest, coat and tie of my daily wardrobe are a legacy of my father. Papa taught me that if I dress like I respect other folks, they’ll appreciate it. Generally that has proven to be the case.
But Miss Shannon’s half-serious remark was fully on target.
I love my overalls; I have always been a fan of that most sensible of garments, and if I felt like I could get away with it, I’d wear’em everyday. Whilst I am a Key Imperial kind of guy, I do own and love an ancient, disreputable set of Pointers, as well as some more modern (but not as well-crafted) Dickies.
One of everyone’s favorite family photos is of This Writer at about the age of three, with ash-blonde hair, a straw hat, and you guessed it, overalls. Those ‘hauls’ were not, I might add, made or marketed by some brand-name company with a cutesy name contrived to connive gullible parents out of money for children’s clothes. My mother made them – by gosh, she didn’t need to buy them from anyone named Oshkosh.
Overalls are generally rugged, comfortable and unpretentious. Overalls have pockets aplenty, a feature I find useful every hour of every day, even when I’m wearing a suit and tie. Of course, the quantity of pockets in overalls can present a challenge to any boy with the mind of a scavenger, or for that matter, any man who hasn’t really outgrown the scavenging tendencies of boyhood.
As long as my mother did my laundry, you could gauge the success of the day’s adventures by the volume and pitch of her reaction to what was in my pockets.
If it was just a simple, disgusted, “Jeff,” the day hadn’t been that memorable. If she used my whole name at the top of her lungs – “Jefferson Covert Weaver!” – then the pockets of my overalls were still filled with treasures I’d forgotten about after arriving home. Things like big bugs, arrowheads, snakes, rocks, fish-hooks, and other valuables.
I feel a certain sentimental whimsy every time my beloved Miss Rhonda discovers for herself what kinds of things can be hidden in overalls pockets. Her squall-meter is a bit more sensitive than Mother’s, since Mother had two other boys who filled their overall pockets with stuff.
For reasons I cannot explain, the vast majority of men will admit, if they are honest, that there is a certain wholesome attractiveness in a woman who wears overalls.
Indeed, the right girl in the right pair of overalls will put any silk mini-dress to shame for true, honest beauty. Not sexy in a Shania Twain kind of way, but more like the girl next door who’s all grown up and doesn’t know it. A woman must be confident to wear overalls in public, since with most women’s clothing the degree of social acceptability is directly linked to discomfort and impracticality. The woman who will wears overalls in public knows not only that she can get away with doing so, but doesn’t care what other folks think of her fashion sense – and frankly, she makes them look good.
On the other side of that coin, there has never been a man who wore overalls who would be called handsome whilst so garbed. At the same time, he can’t care. The man who wears overalls is not only comfortable, but knows the task at hand is far more important than the vague dictates of fashion, and he can count on his overalls. Whether that task at hand is shoeing an angry mule, plowing a field, catching a fish or taking a nap, one knows he can count on his overalls, if everything else falls by the wayside.
No, you won’t see me wearing overalls to cover a board meeting, or to church. The Old Man would come down from Heaven, reanimate his tired old bones, and wallop me about the head and shoulders if I did so. While he wore them – albeit, very rarely –he recognized their qualities, as well as their place in the grand scheme of things.
He once told me the least trustworthy politician was the one who’d wear a white shirt, a tie, and a pressed pair of overalls. A man like that, he said, would lie to a widow’s face and raise her taxes.
You see, overalls are honest, straightforward and reliable. If someone’s overalls are lightly stained, worn shiny in places, and slightly frayed, you can tell they’ve been there and done that.
And with the right pair of overalls, and enough pockets, you can go most anywhere and do most anything.
Just remember to take the snakes out of your pocket before your mom does the laundry.
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