It’s that time of the year, when we don our winter gear.
Have you notice how much more technologically advanced cold weather wear has
become? I have a “puffer” coat that is packable and so lightweight, it hardly
feels like I’m wearing a coat. It can also be stuffed into a small pouch and
packed into luggage without taking up too much space or causing your baggage to
go over the weight limit. The new garments also dry quickly.
That wasn’t the case when I was growing up. When I went to
first grade in 1966, I remember I had a wool cloth coat with matching leggings.
The leggings were like fishermen’s waders only make from the same material as
my coat. They were so thick that I looked like Randy in The Christmas Story,
when he couldn’t put his arms down from so much bulk. I also remember that
they were itchy and took forever to dry if they got wet in the snow. I can
still recall the smell of wet wool!
Winter footwear was no better back then. I had red rubber
boots that you slipped over your shoes. When removing them, your shoe
inevitably came off with them, which resulted in putting your bare foot down in
a pile of melting snow. What a step up it was to get lined boots that you just
slid your foot into—sometimes with the aid of Town Talk bread bags!
Most kids hate wearing coats, but I did have one coat that I
loved. I got it in fifth grade. It was forest green corduroy and had a white
fur collar, but what I really liked was that it had a matching fur hat that was
styled like a bonnet and tied under the chin with strings that ended in
matching fur pompoms. Talk about 60s style!
In seventh grade, maxi coats came into fashion, and my
friend got one that I would have traded all the Love’s Baby Soft perfume in the
world for. It was navy blue with a hood, but what was really cool about it was
that on the back was a scene made from felt of a pathway that lead to a castle.
The “castle coat” had killer style!
In high school, I proudly sported my SBA (St. Benedict
Academy) high school jacket, which had my name and grad date embroidered on it.
That jacket was a great ice breaker. If you were out the mall, ice skating, or
at the movies, it wasn’t uncommon for boys to come up and say, “Hey, you go to
SBA? You know my sister? Or cousin? You got a boyfriend?” For dressy occasions,
I had a camel coat.
My younger brother often sported a lined plaid CPO jacket,
but if I thought my boots were ugly, his galoshes were ghastly. They were
usually made of this drab black/green rubber and fastened with hooks and what I
thought looked like little ladders.
Winter garb back then may not have always been comfortable,
but it was certainly durable. My late Uncle Bill Calvert was in the Navy
Seabees where he was issued a peacoat back in the early 1950s. His daughter, my
cousin, Lynn, wore it in the 1970s, and then she passed it along to my brother
Tim, who wore it in high school in the 1980s. When he outgrew it (my uncle was
only about 120 pounds when the coat was issued to him), my sister-in-law,
Margi, took it.
 |
| Ryan in Uncle Bill's peacoat. |
Today, that coat is at Kent State University, where my
nephew, Ryan, the architect major, wears it around campus. When you love a coat
like my Uncle Bill’s classic pea coat, it’s great that it lasts, but when it
comes to wool leggings, I’m glad they died a slow soggy death.
This originally appeared in the Winter issue of Pittsburgh Fifty-Five Plus magazine.
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