Six and a half days a week, my summer retirement uniform is shorts and a shirt with necessary pocket and a collar preferable.
The other half day? That’s Sunday, of course, and that means church. Blessedly, this church is rather informal although you’ll see a suit and tie here and there. Regular jeans are perfectly fine.
As for shoes, I’ve gone a route I’d never followed before … sandals. They’re leather and c-o-m-f-y, cushioned and cool.
Growing up as the son of a rancher-cattle trader and a farm-raised mother, jeans were the order of the day. By the time I’d reached junior high, I discovered the teen-preferred jean was Levis.
Somehow, those didn’t fit me very well. Mother explained to me that I was “long-waisted” like her. That meant that my near-six-foot frame boasted a pants inseam of 30.5 inches. If the bottom half of me had matched the top half, I would’ve been 6-2, 6-3 and had an inseam of 34 or 35.
We lived on a farm/ranch until the end of my second-grade year when we move “to town.”
So, jeans have always been an integral part of my wardrobe.
However, shorts were not so cool when I was young. They were regarded as “sissy.” Jeans or overalls were fine.
We lived out in a rural area and were close to the town of Donie, which at that time had its own school system. There was one school but it included grades 1-12.
I rode a bus to Donie School. Our house was about 100 yards from the bus stop where it turned around and head toward Donie. We were at the end of the line.
Each morning I trudged to the bus stop. When it rained, the road was muddy. If it was spring, summer or early fall, I didn’t care because I could go barefoot to school if the temperature was above 60.
On this particular morning, I was at the bus stop and there was a large puddle of water there from a rain the day before. I was playing by the puddle and fell down in it, of course. I went screaming toward the house telling Mother my plight. She took me in and told me that she hadn’t been able to do laundry for a few days due to the rain, and all I had was short pants. I moaned and cried and pleaded to stay home.
“I can’t wear sissy shorts to school!” I declared. “The big boys will pick on me and tease me!”
She was having none of it. So I trudged back down to the bus stop.
I got on the bus and there were a few kids near my age on the bus. They just looked at me and stifled snickers. All the while, I’m scared to death that someone — some bigger someone — is going to call me sissy.
Fear became reality as I walked onto the school grounds from the bus. There were all the kids grades 1-12 and “the big boys” began teasing me and calling me sissy. If they’d been more literate, they might’ve called me Little Lord Fauntleroy.
I alternately cried and fought all day. I was so relieved when I got home and Mother informed me she’d washed and ironed (wash-n-wear wasn’t invented then) my meager supply of jeans.
I could walk tall and proud the next day at Donie School.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
