Growing Up Southern: September 16, 2017

We turned as the bride-to-be started up the aisle, resplendent in her white gown. In the crowd, to her left, were two girls in tank tops and shorts. Oh dear. Has respect now left the upper world?

I was relating this story to a group of friends. I commented, “I wouldn’t be surprised to attend a funeral some day at which spectators wore shorts.”

“Ahem,” said one of the crowd. “Saw that last month.”

Last night’s Bill Maher show brought this to mind. Tim Gunn, star of a TV show called Project Runway was on the show. I have just seen bits and pieces of Gunn’s show, while my wife watched, but evidently it is quite popular.

Anyway, Mr. Gunn was bemoaning the current state of dress in America. I must note that he was wearing a blazer with checks over a striped shirt, but no matter. He seems to enjoy a reputation as an

Tim Gunn has a point.

arbiter of taste, so I will bow. He referred to “the slobivacation of America.” I’m still thinking about this, not sure I fully agree with his detective work. On the other hand, one trip to any Walmart store in our country will cause one to understand his concern.

As a child of the Not-Deep South, and a sucker for discards, I’ve wound up with box upon box of family photographs. A look through them reveals on solid fact about men who lived in the land of my roots during my early youth, men who had worked digging fenceposts for 50 cents a day, but were never so poor that they didn’t own one dress suit. It just wasn’t proper. My father bought his at the Henry Marx store in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, suits of a flexible design suitable both for church or for courting the precious young thing he won and married.

As you look at those old photographs, you wonder how long it took to save enough money for the suits, shirts, ties, and hats (oh yes, hats) those men wore. Appearance must have been important for them. It held true for women as well. A young couple may have had, as they say in these parts, “neither a pot nor window,” but the man had a suit and the woman had a “Sunday-dress.”

This was the generation, by the way, that they now call “The Greatest.” Some tended the country while others chased the fascists off the planet. Many didn't wear their Sunday clothes for a while.

Something happened afterward, though. We started, as Mr. Gunn suggests, to become increasingly unconcerned about how we appeared in public. I don’t know why or when. I suspect it began the first time we allowed a surly teenager to eat at the table wearing a baseball cap. It went downhill from there and led, eventually, to a scene witnessed recently wherein a moron wearing a broad-brimmed cowboy hat sat through a church funeral without once removing the monstrosity.

It’s worse in Texas. I hear they even let young women wear short dresses with cowboy boots, Barfola.

John Steinbeck noticed the association between dress and social status in a scene he used twice that I know of, one in a collection of short stories called Pastures of Heaven and again in East of Eden. A rich landowner tells a worker that they are going to town, only to have the worker say he must change clothes first. When the landowner comments that he doesn’t change clothes for that purpose, he is met with, “Yes, you have to be very rich to go to town dressed as you are.” (Quoted from memory. My Steinbeck books are currently packed).

Anyway, Mr. Gunn made an impression. I think I’ll start dressing better and see what impact that may have. It’ll scare the hell out of the Walmart cashiers, but it may speed up my transactions at the bank. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about attracting a women. I already found me one.

An aunt and uncle dressed
up for Sunday visiting