The Curse of Uncle Phil's Pants, Robert Roth [summer reads txt] 📗

and stiff blends. Worse, they were cut baggy, but the prevailing style at my school was slender, sometimes bordering on skintight.

New pants styles paraded through my high school in a continuous stream — slit pockets in front, western-style pockets, pockets on the side, no pockets at all, wide belt loops, narrow belt loops, side tabs and buttons instead of belt loops, iridescent fabric, sharkskin fabric, pin stripes, belted back….

Of course, none of that meant anything to my parents. Pants were pants. No amount of pleading or arguing could change their perspective. “Why should we buy you pants?” they’d counter every time. “Uncle Phil’s pants are free.” It was impossible to shake their logic. Sometimes, though, I think they took pity on me. “If I had the money,” my father would say, “I would buy you a dozen pairs of new pants.” He always sounded so sincere when he said it that I believed him.

My parents would give me money to have the pants hemmed, but that was all. No tapering, no nothing. Taking matters into my own hands, I decided I could peg them myself. I had no concept of how to sew, but my mother had this hand-held sewing machine. It was the kind of gadget that would be sold on an infomercial today. It was like a giant stapler, you just kept squeezing it together as you pulled the fabric through. A cinch, I thought.

I turned a pair of pants inside out and went to work. I ran new seams up the outside of each leg. The needle would hang up every few stitches and leave a snarl of thread in its wake. Some of the stitches were three inches long; others made the fabric pucker in places. The need for a straight seam completely eluded me. When I tried on the pants and glanced in the mirror, my heart sank. They looked as if rats had chewed them on. I was clearly in over my head.

I didn’t know what to do. Eventually I showed the pants to my mother. She hit the ceiling and made me wear my handiwork to school the next day. That put a quick end to my tailoring career.

I did win one fashion victory along the way, however. When the no-pockets style came in, somehow I talked my parents into letting me have my side pockets sewn up. For about two months, I felt great. Á la mode. Then no pockets went out of style, and just as quickly, I did, too. Except now, I didn’t even have pockets.

Near the end of my junior year, I had a revelation. Why not get an after-school job and pay for my own clothes? What a flash of brilliance. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

There were few after-school jobs back then. Fast food was still in its infancy. There was no work at the hotels. And the stores along Lincoln Road were in a slump. I lucked out and got a job around the corner from our apartment, at a local printer. I swept the floors, answered the phone and fed his cats.

From this, I earned enough money to walk into the Stag Shop one Saturday and buy my first pair of real Miami Beach pants. They were light gray summer-weight wool slacks with slit pockets. I tried them on and stared at myself in the three-way mirror. Wow. I couldn’t believe how much better they looked on me than Uncle Phil’s pants. I stood there in all my newfound glory, casting approving glances into the mirror as the Cuban tailor went to work with his chalk. He tugged at the outside seam.

“Taper?” he asked.

My eyes lit up. “Yes,” I told him, “tight.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

That was the end of Uncle Phil’s pants, but not of their power over my life. They say you are what you eat. Well, for the next thirty years, I was what I wore. I became a slave to fashion. I had charge accounts at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. The salesclerks there knew me by name.

I was The Man in Black. I wore black silk, black wool, black linen, black everything. I was cooler than cool, and it was costing me a fortune.

Then one day, out of the blue, it happened. Deliverance.
My wife and mother-in-law were planning a shopping trip to the outlet mall, an hour’s drive up the Interstate. “Why don’t you come along,” she suggested. “They have a Saks outlet there.”

Saks? That was all she needed to say. Up we went. Visions of fantastic savings on designer clothing filled my head as I drove. A new sports coat would be nice, maybe some ties. I marched eagerly through the front door, ready to start hunting down the bargains.
Suddenly, for a reason I can’t explain even to this day, my mind was not my own. It belonged to some other guy. And that guy was gravitating not to the displays of marked-down Jhane Barnes and Georgio Armani, but to a circular rack of no-name chinos — thirty-five bucks a pair.

It was a defining moment, and I knew it. I stood at the threshold of a new world, unsure of what to do next. Then, to my wife’s surprise and my disbelief, I bought two pairs of the chinos, one khaki, one drab green. I didn’t stop there. I walked over to another display and with a strange look in my eyes, did something even more astonishing: I bought two loud Hawaiian shirts to go with them.

I was free.

Imprint

Publication Date: 12-22-2009

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To Mimi and Sonny