Paul Ruffin
Columnist
August 29, 2007 04:25 pm
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(A few days ago we got an invitation to the SHSU President’s Academic Awards Dinner on the 24th, and the suggested dress was “After Five Attire.”
Well, I don’t think that President Gaertner wants me to show up wearing what I typically wear after five. I’d probably get LOCKED up. So, sez I to m’lady, “I guess I’ll wear my suit.” She has seen me in a tux (for my daughter’s wedding), but I doubt that she thought she’d ever see me go formal again. The whole thing got me to thinking about a piece I wrote back in 2001; since it has relevance, I’m running it again.)
My aversion to wearing suits probably goes back to my father and his philosophy that when a man is dressed properly, no matter where he is – provided he doesn’t have to talk or write anything and isn’t drunk or behaving boorishly – people have only one fundamental thing to measure him by: his clothes. Hence, poor though we were, whenever he ventured forth, mostly to church, my father was always dressed in current fashion, and he wore expensive suits.
During the Great Depression, when he was growing up, he once worked hard all summer and saved enough money to go into Millport, Alabama, the nearest town, and buy a suit, which it is reported he walked home in, some fifteen miles, in brogans, with his overalls slung over his shoulder. He later borrowed a pair of dress shoes from his Uncle Charlie and came back to town riding on a mule, which he parked at the edge of town.
He was a fashion statement and probably felt no less important than Jesus riding into Jerusalem. (I trust that I am right about the city here – I know it wasn’t Houston or Jackson, since neither is in the Bible.) It is reported that he sat a very long time at a table in the local drugstore visiting with some Millport lass, who might or might not have been the girl he would marry and who therefore might or might not become my momma. Later he walked her to the local fishpond, where they spent even more time talking about the things that young people would have talked about in those days. It is not reported whether he kept his suit on the whole time at the fishpond. This story may sound apocryphal, but I believe it — suits were very important to him.
So it was that I grew up believing that men who wore fashionable suits had a skewed value system, putting their wearing apparel ahead of all else that might matter.
But my aversion to wearing suits also doubtless arose from my one personal experience with them when I was a boy.
At some point my father decided it best that I too be dressed in some fashion, at least to attend church – a shabbily attired kid could ruin your image, you know – so he went out and spent his pinched pennies (earned at a Columbus, Mississippi, toilet seat factory) on a dark wool suit for me; he even bought me shoes.
If they made tropical-weight wool suits in those days, the people who made mine had not heard of it, or they used it on more expensive suits. The fabric of my little two-piece was made of the heaviest, stiffest, scratchiest material I had ever felt, roughly twice the thickness and weight of winter dress uniform I later wore in the Army. Processed wool? I suspect that it went from shearing shed to suit in three days, with those little naked sheep or goats or whatever kind of animal they took it from standing around shivering and wondering what happened to THEIR suits. I simply could not stand to wear it, even on the coldest of days. I itched and burned and twisted as if the very fires of Hell were raging beneath the pew of that Assembly of God church.
It was a great mystery to my parents how the suit managed to get burned badly by the trash barrel one Sunday after church, with two great smoking holes in the jacket and one on each pants leg, when I sustained not a single singe or blister. No more suits for me, Daddy said. I was, of course, terribly disappointed.
Here’s what I’m getting around to. I have spent my entire adult life avoiding situations where I would have been required to wear a suit. Period. If I could get by with a sports jacket and tie, fine. I have almost never gone to weddings or funerals for that very reason – I do not want to wear a suit. (As for ties, the only one I’ve found since I moved to Willis was the one that I had the sense to lap over the coat hanger my suit is on.)
And then this big shindig for My President, Dr. B.K. Marks, who has just retired as head of SHSU, comes along, and Sharon, my former wife, says to me, ‘It’s time you owned a suit. This is the occasion. Do it for Dr. Marks.”
Well, now, I know fully well that Bob Marks would never expect me to buy a suit for his big retirement party. Why, at the reception celebrating his appointment as president, I dropped by in shorts and a T-shirt.
When I apologized at the door, he shook my hand and grinned and said that he wouldn’t have expected me to come any other way. He knows I go for comfort.
But a man in time learns that there are adjustments to be made if domestic tranquility is to continue in the household, so I turned myself over to Sharon and said, “Fine. Tell me what you want me to do and when and where you want it done, and I’ll do it. Anything for my President.”
So it was that I found myself going into the Men’s Warehouse in The Woodlands with her on a fine Saturday morning in early August. When one of the friendly clerks asked what I’d like to see, Sharon took over: Tropical-weight wool, she said, in black. The word WOOL sent tremors through me, but she explained that this new wool is not scratchy at all, that it’s very lightweight and comfortable. I was thinking about August weather and that little horse-blanket-weight wool suit from hell.
After I had tried on several coats, I started to tell the nice fellow waiting on me that I just wanted to look like Donald Coers, my former English office mate at SHSU who is now Provost out at Angelo State. See, when Don turned academic, he really got flashy with his clothes – snappy, you’d say – and I just figured that was the look we were after. But I kept my mouth shut and went on running through suit coats until Sharon nodded that we'd found what she wanted. And that’s the way it was: What she wanted.
You talking about professionals! Those guys at the Men’s Warehouse make you want and need things you never dreamed about. When we walked out of there, I owned a new wardrobe: black wool suit, with dress shirts and matching ties and nylon socks (which I have never worn before) and a pair of new black shoes. Sharon even put suspenders on the ticket. I could have retooled my shop for what we spent.
So, Bob, it is Sunday morning, and your big party is tomorrow night. I’ll get out my new shoes this afternoon and use some 80-grit sandpaper to roughen up the soles so that I won't slide down in the reception line and embarrass you. My new wool suit, replete with white shirt and tie and suspenders, is hanging in its bag, raring to go, and I’m just itching to put it on for my President. I’'s my gift to one hell of a great fellow. Man, I hope you notice.
(So, President Gaertner, I’m wearing that suit again Friday night in your honor. Man, I hope you notice.)
Paul Ruffin may be reached c/o English Department, Box 2146, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341-2146, e-mail eng_pdr@shsu.edu.
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