100 Words, Family, Seasons, Uncategorized

Kiffey’s New Coat

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Not long after we moved here 30 years ago, Husband got a new winter coat. He still has it. It is a down filled Maine Game Warden’s parka and we got it from LLBean. It is really warm. He has worn it a lot through some pretty cold weather. He has had it repaired several times.  He has a very sentimental attachment to this coat. He is pretty sad right now because it appears that the zipper is finally shot and I don’t think it can be replaced. I ordered a new Maine Game Warden’s parka for him on Friday. I told him that if he keeps going at this pace, and this one lasts for 30 years, this may be the last winter coat he ever buys. (Kiffey is the Irish diminutive of his first name, in case you were wondering.)

What is the oldest article of clothing you own? What do you have that needs to be replaced?

28 thoughts on “Kiffey’s New Coat”

  1. This is an easy question. I need to replace everything. Well, everything except outsized sweatsuits. I’ve been poor a long time. Because I was poor and not social, I only bought large sweatsuits. Now, to my great surprise, I’m social again, but have no clothing to wear in public. And I seem to be downsizing, which complicates matters.

    Also, I have no winter clothing (no coat, gloves, hat or boots). I used to have those things, then I moved to Oregon, a land where “winter” is like a wet but mild April in Minnesota. All my winter stuff got left behind, although I’ve got some good rainwear.

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  2. I have an old businessman’s trench coat (tan, belted) that I probably bought in 1978 when I first started teaching school. (I was one of those “suit-and-tie teachers”– I didn’t buy into the move to casual clothes for teachers in the 70s.)

    Makes me think of the “Seinfeld” episode where Jerry’s dad is reminiscing about his days as a salesman in the “garment district.” He claims he invented the “Executive”–the beltless trench coat.

    Alas, I never saved my cabana wear. 😦

    Chris in Owatonna

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  3. I have some t-shirts that date back to high school, including one that I silk screened a design on for a concert. A t-shirt doesn’t take up a lot of room in a drawer, so I am not really motivated to move them along.

    I usually try to fix rather than replace things whenever I can. The thing that probably most needs replacing is my water heater. It’s working fine for the moment, but it’s old and could fail at any time.

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      1. I guess I can feel pleased, but I don’t think it’s really much to be proud of. Although I’ve always been pretty physically active, I’ve never had to diet or adopt a serious exercise program to stay the same size. If it had required a lot of virtuous behavior, I’m sure I would have failed.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I have two categories of old clothes:

    1. Sentimental saves, i.e. my hippie pants of which I have written before, or the dress I wore when I met husband, neither of which I could hope to fit into at this time, but I save them to remember that I really was once shaped like that and could wear a bikini!

    2. Stuff I love to wear and cannot discard.

    I will address #2. I knitted a sweater for my mom many years ago (when I was parenting a young child and had to stay occupied while supervising evening play–so 30 years or more). I took it back when we moved her out of her house 10 years ago and I still wear it on occasion because it is warm and I like it. There are several pairs of jeans that I cannot part with, and a large flannel shirt that is cuddly in the winter. Two winter coats I refuse to part with because I don’t like the newer models available. I think that is about all.

    I understand Kiffey’s unwillingness to part with the coat–especially warm coat that meets the need.

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  5. There are two sweaters that I “disappeared” for a client when I was doing organizing for people around 2001. I recently realized how long I’ve had them – one is an icy blue, warm and cuddly with a loose turtleneck that I now wear around the house as soon as cold weather hits. The other is a (probably) hand knit pullover, sort of magenta, that I keep because it’s the only thing I have in that color.

    Will look around and see if there’s anything older…

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  7. Husband’s new coat won’t arrive until Monday. Right now our windchill is -24, and we are staying inside. If he has to go out, at least the old coat still works.

    He also has some brown Frye boots he has had for about 25 years. He plans to buy a pair of black Frye boots when we are in New York in a couple of weeks.. He found a store on 5th Ave. that supposedly carries them.

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    1. IPB, I don’t know where you live, but here in Minnesota and N. Dakota where our writer is from, a warm coat is necessary—it gets too exciting if you don’t have one. The wind blowing so hard on a cold day would cause you to freeze quickly.

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  9. Morning –
    A day off for me. And yet Kelly has to work.

    Most of my clothes are old. I’ve got T-shirts in my closet from when I was working as a Stagehand; those would be 20 years old. I don’t wear them either; mostly sentimentality.
    I’ve talked about my ditch jacket before; I haven’t gotten it out yet; not cold enough.
    And how much I liked the jacket that I got with the tractor purchase in 1986 that finally just got so ragged I had to throw it out. Still miss it and still haven’t found anything i like as much.

    For a few months in 1982 I worked pressing Tuxedo’s for a Formal Wear company. I got a white tux jacket with black trim edging to wear for my high school grad picture. Complete with bow tie and thick ruffled shirt. I looked pretty sharp! (For 1982 standards). I’m pretty sure that’s still down in my old room. Along with my brothers blue crush velvet jacket. I probably don’t fit either one. I’m sure of it.
    It’s right there next to Kelly’s high school band uniform from 1981.

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  10. I have a pair of vintage black suede pumps – not that I’ve had them all this time, found them in a thrift shop. But they’re from the early 40s, I’m sure.

    Also have my dad’s Army uniform, and the suit jacket my mom got married in. I should get them over to some costume department!

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    1. THe HIgh School or College program would love those. My niece is the drama coach at her high school and takes any weird costumes I provide. Props, too.

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  11. My two oldest articles of clothing are pieces I’ve kept for unknown reasons, I never wear either. One is a red, Finnish, felt hat with green, white, and yellow rickrack trim, a Christmas gift from my Finnish pen pal, Monica Bergstrøm, when I was thirteen. The other is an unattractive, dark blue swim suit I wore while diving between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Don’t ask why I’ve hung on to either of them, I really couldn’t say. Perhaps that they are both ties to important activities during my teens?

    I need a new winter jacket. The one I have is at least twenty years old, and I never cared much for it to begin with. But, I go to REI, or some such place, to look for a replacement, and I’m overwhelmed by how expensive these jackets are. I wouldn’t mind the price so much if I liked the design and colors, but I’m not crazy about any of them. A friend of mine gifted me with a beautiful, used wool coat a couple of years ago. It’s gorgeous, and extremely stylish. Unfortunately, it’s a coat that has sacrificed practicality to style. You can’t hang it up without a hanger, and if you try to hang it over the back of a chair, parts of it will trail onto the floor and trip up innocent people passing by. It takes me about five minutes to arrange it on my body. It’s a coat that screams: “the wearer of this coat isn’t used to such sophisticated apparel.” I’ve worn it exactly once.

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  12. I am not really a packrat where my clothing is involved but once I find something I like I keep it until it literally falls to shreds. Back when I started working for Software Etc, (33+ years) I bought a black skirt and a big sweater, multicolors, lots of lots of colors on a black background, a turtleneck sweater. I still have the sweater; I wear a couple of times every winter and always get lots of remarks on it including one time from a guy in an elevator in London who hugged me and said I had the greatest looking jumper ever. I love the sweater.

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    1. Back between marriages, I had quite a few bad dates. One stands out as particularly horrible. There was absolutely no redeeming quality to the evening – at all. When the guy took me home, I made the mistake of inviting him in for a cup of tea, thinking that perhaps we could part ways without hating each other. No such luck.

      The centerpiece of my living room was a new, very colorful couch that I had just purchased at Donaldson’s on sale. I really liked that sofa. The guy upon eyeing my wonderful, new couch declared: “I bet they had a party the day they sold that!” This guy was a furniture salesman at Schneiderman’s, and I retorted that you’d probably need to be a salesman at Schneiderman’s to make such a statement. I escorted him to the door without serving tea, and we never spoke again.

      Fast forward several years to when I met husband. I told him about that date, and that comment. (I still had that couch, at that time, although Monschka by then had done a reasonably good job of shredding it.)

      Ever since then, it has been a private joke that when either of us buys or wears something that’s particularly colorful, or we see someone wearing something a little out of the ordinary, one of us will say: “I bet they had a party when they sold that.”

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  13. The second oldest thing I own is a sweatshirt from Maui. I was there with the client, about 30 years ago and at the last minute we decided we were going to do that bike ride that they do down Haleakala Volcano. You have to go up to the top of the volcano before sunset to do this ride and it is COLD up there. We of course didn’t have any warm stuff at all so we purchased sweatshirts at the gift shop. I still have the sweatshirt but YA won’t let me wear it outside of the house anymore.

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