Yes, I Am a Gauche Rube. . .

 

Imagine!  Wearing seersusker and Madras AFTER the Labor Day weekend.  The unmitigated nerve! But several students and faculty passersby offered their compliments as I moved through day.  Never necessary, of course, but always nice to hear. 

The shoes are not as red as they appear here.  In real life they are a darker tan.  Worn with a matching belt of course.

Both suit and tie are vintage items.  The latter hails originally from a Carol Reed Ski Shop in New Hampshire.  How on Earth it found its way to a thrift/charity store in Central Illinois, where I purchased it for a song 12 or 13 years ago, is anybody's guess. The real deal.  Made in Sri Lanka.

The suit is Abercrombie and Fitch from a time when that was a label for adults.  My late father, I believe, had a few such items from the company in his wardrobe, which, at the time (mid-1970s) was anything but loudly branded t-shirts for the under 25 set.

He wore a similar suit during the summer months as a young executive for a large brokerage house out of Manhattan.  I still remember vividly when he brought it home from his tailor after the usual alterations. Ol' Dad hailed from Saint Louis, Missouri, but the rest of the family was southern through and through and would have been familiar with seersucker suits.  

The notable exception, of course, was my Sudeten German grandfather (Grandpa Heinz-Ulrich), who turned up in this country as a boy with his mother just post-World War One following the breakup of the Austrian Empire.  They settled in Saint Louis, which at the time had a large German-speaking community, not unlike Chicago, Minneapolis, and various other Midwestern centers. No more odd, I suppose, than many other families who came/come to this country from other places.

But I digress.

The other man I knew, who wore seersucker suits during the summer, was one of our deans at my former institution in Central Illinois.  God knows it can be miserable during July and August there. Hot, humid, and brown.  Frank came from Alabama, so once again seersucker suits were not necessarily beyond the pale for him. 

Of course, you never see these, or any other type of suits for that matter, here in Mid-Michigan. But that doesn't stop me.  I seem to have reached a point where I can, as they say, put it on and forget about it.  Psychological comfort and a dash of self-confidence maybe?  You be the judge.

-- Heinz-Ulrich