A pocketful of memories
I saw a kid the other day who was wearing a pair of jeans that had a bazillion pockets. No kidding, there were pockets all up and down his pant legs. Though I’ll be the first to admit I’m not exactly a fashion guru, I could tell this kid’s jeans were on the cutting edge of a soon-to-be popular trend. I asked the kid about those jeans, and he told me they were brand new and cost more than $150. I smiled and thought about the jeans I was wearing (only four pockets - two in the front and two in the back) and the comparatively meager price tag that had been attached to my jeans — less than $25.
“What are you going to use all those pockets for?” I asked the young man, who was all of 14 or 15 years old.
“Nothin’,” he said quickly. “They’re just for show.”
As the day wore on, I thought about his answer ... “Just for show,” and I couldn’t help but smile. This kid and countless more like him will pay $150 — maybe more — for a pair of jeans with umpteen pockets which will never be used for anything. I must be really old, my friends, because the idea of a pair of jeans with all those empty pockets seems a little nutty to me. On the other hand, after one pays $150 for a pair of jeans, perhaps there’s nothing left to put in any of the pockets ... but that’s another column.
Those jeans on that young man took me back a few years, when I spent quite a bit of time with my grandfather. Grandpa wore bib overalls nearly every day of his life. With the exception of funerals, weddings, a very occasional church service or school event, Grandpa’s life focused around the farm, and bib overalls were the fashion choice of most farmers back then. And why not? They were sturdy; they didn’t soil easily; they were comfortable ... and they had a lot of pockets.
As a child, I was a bit mesmerized with those bib overalls, primarily because of those pockets. Grandpa’s pockets were never empty, and I knew it. In fact, at any point in time, I was just about able to tell anyone what Grandpa kept in the myriad of pockets that donned those bib overalls ...
The two pockets in the back were easy: The one on the right held a red or blue cloth handkerchief, which was used for runny noses (his and mine), a scratch from a barbed wire fence or an orange popsicle that had melted and dripped down my arms. It was also used for a quick spit bath if my dirty face happened to ride into town with Grandpa. The pocket in the back on the left held only his wallet.
On the bib, there was a thin pocket for an ink pen, which Grandpa used often. During times when I was with Grandpa at the barbershop or somewhere else where I needed to wait quietly, he’d slip that pen out of the pocket and let me use it along with a piece of note paper he had tucked in another bib pocket. That big pocket on the bib was often filled with envelopes headed to the mailbox, a list of things Grandma needed from the store, or other important papers Grandpa needed to deliver to the bank, the insurance man or someone else in town.
The lower pockets contained a variety of items to be used at different times around the farm, including different sizes of nails and other hardware, a handful of change, usually a piece of twine, a pretty rock I found and presented to him, and of course ... my very favorite pocket ... Grandpa always had an orange gumball waiting for me in the long pocket down by the loop that held the hammer. I seldom remember a day when that orange gumball wasn’t there, and now as an adult, I can’t imagine how many pennies he needed to spend for that gumball machine to spit out my favorite orange-colored treat.
Aaahhh ... another pocketful of memories from Grandpa. May that kid with his $150 jeans and umpteen pockets be so lucky.
