Thursday Work from Home Style. . .

A pleasantly sunny and warm, yet comfortable September day working from home. Perfect weather still for some Madras shorts, leather deck shoes, and a now 20-year old OCBD from Land's End that is finally too worn and frayed in places to wear with a jacket and necktie or suit. But until a tear develops somewhere, it remains ideal for frumping around the house, albeit tucked in and with a casual belt. Said shirt is also great for recording, editing, processing, and uploading another episode of my podcast.

As I have written here a number of times before today, this particular shirt was one of several 'Original Oxfords' purchased from Land's End when I took my first teaching job outside of Minneapolis, following graduate school, at a small college now long closed due to highly questionable ethical and financial practices.

Of that, the less said, the batter. But I still have and wear several items purchased in 2003-2004 when it became clear that my existing professional attire was in need of bolstering with a few additional items. Oh, yes. I already possessed a suit, a blazer, tweed jacket, two dress belts, two pairs of tasseled loafers, a couple of pairs of khakis, and several dress shirts -- a solid starter wardrobe -- thanks to both implicit and explicit family guidance over the years. But a few additional items were necessary for teaching undergrads five days a week in more than a graduate teaching assistant capacity.

It was time to move beyond the typical jeans and Dan Post cowboy boots so typical of my grad student attire in other words. But I digress!

I still have this particular model of shirt in several colors, but as I have lamented previously, I should have had the foresight to purchase several in this very shade of light blue. Luckily, we have the likes of Mercer & Sons, J. Press, and several others that offer superior products, but at prices that far exceed the cost of the now defunct 'Original Oxford' by Land's End.

I am almost certain that they used to retail for approximately US$8.98 around 40 years ago when I recall seeing nondescript ads in my maternal grandmother's issues of Yankee Magazine. Considerable sartorial bang for the buck when you think about it. Even back then.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

AnonymousSeptember 5, 2024 at 12:52 PM
My many Original Oxfords in the nineties retailed for $19.95 as I recall. They were great. Long gone, and now so is the (exact size, dress shirt style) Hyde Park which, in its last years, was basically thinned down to Original Oxford thickness. Was too new in my career to pay $45 for Hyde Parks back then but found one recently on Ebay, the old thick version, for a song. Now I never want it to wear out, so admire it in the closet more than in the hamper. JDV
AnonymousSeptember 7, 2024 at 6:40 AM
Ah! So it is possible that, 10-15 years before, the price was in the neighborhood of US$8.98. IN any case, thank you for commenting, JDV. Have a nice weekend.

H-U

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