Sunday, May 18, 2008

Out of the Closet

After cleaning out my office of twenty five years a few weeks ago for our move and the amazing amount of stuff I had never thrown out in just one room I realised my apt which I have been in about the same time was much worse.So of late I have been going through things.It started with the realization I don't need to keep every Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazine going back to 1984.So I have started going through and keeping only ones I have used and all the July BBQ issues from Bon Appetit.Yesterday I finally started looking into closets.I have clothes from high school and college still sitting around .I am ready to part with my wool tartan plaid pants 32 waist I bought the year after high school.Pittsford was a country club suburb and even us stoners dressed an odd mix of preppy which became more pronounced after my Cape Summers.Speaking of which I found my old Babes Restaurant t-shirt held together by a few threads with the stains of breakfasts cleaned up long ago.I also found my alligator roach clip(a gift from a Framingham summer girlfriend from the Cape Days when I wore Izod before Polo became In before Izod made a comeback.I also found my IRA t-shirt which I picked up in Provincetown in 1979.It just shows a gunman wearing a scarf over his face kneeling with an automatic rifle and IRA underneath.I have no idea who gave it to me but there was a guy in the Surfclub just about every night that summer watching the Jug Band with us who was from Ireland and would yell out to Geno onstage everynight at somepoint"Ireland for the Irish!" so maybe I got it from him.I also have a collection of t-shirts long ago torn to shreds and not wearable but with some memory which meant I could not throw them away.But I must get rid of them along with the pair of Red Chinos from Puritan Clothing I bought in Wellfleet summer of 78.Why I bought them I don't know because we never dressed up on the cape except that summer we lived in a tent/trailer large lawn furniture fire pit area on the edge of North Truro Family Camping Area on Highland Rd.Us four guys bought sport coats at a Truro church sale the first week of June we put on each night at five for cocktail hour.Usually it was just the jacket,no shirt and a pair of cords or shorts for a drink before we went off to Provincetown or on occasion Wellfleet for the nights fun.For some reason though the sportcoats always stayed in site 42 overflow which came to be called the Truro Hilton by our many friends that summer.

1 comment:

Susan said...

I can picture what you describe because my husband had lived in our house for many many years before I moved in. He had clothes that would fit our teenage neighbor, and phonebooks from the 80s. It was a veritable lasagna of clothing and papers. In fact, in the very spot I am sitting right now there used to be a spare bed, piled TO THE CEILING.