ohmidog!

As some of you know, the main reason for my lengthy layover in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — in addition to it being the place of my birth, and a lovely mid-sized town, and its temperate climate, and its thriving arts scene, and it’s cigaretty legacy — is that my mother lives here.

About twice a week we get together. They are brief and pleasant visits, usually for a meal at the retirement community in which she lives, though sometimes I manage to talk her into an outing.

It has been nice to live so near her, and we get along well, almost drama free. I feel we’ve grown closer, and that she’s grown closer to Ace, too — but not so close that she’s accepting when he drools on her, as he does when she breaks out the dog biscuits.

“It leaves a stain,” she says. “No,” I argue, “drool doesn’t leave a stain. It just disappears.” (I know this from my own pillow.) Usually, any disagreements we have are minor, like that.

There’s really only one recurring major issue we clash over: pants, namely mine.

Well, there is the job issue (as in I should really get one) and the health insurance issue (as in I should really get some). But mainly it’s pants.

She thinks I should have some ”dress pants.”

That’s her term. To me,  it seems a contradiction. “Dress pants” is like “bottle can” or “shoe socks” or “underpants hat,” or like those half skirt/half shorts things women once wore that I think have gone out of style. What were they called? Culottes?

For nearly 40 years, I’ve worn blue jeans every day. There might have been a brief phase where I experimented with corduroy, but mainly my lower half is constantly clad in denim, which I’m pretty sure is the reason all the hair has rubbed off my lower legs.

I knew when I moved here that the official uniform of the southern male was  khaki pants, but I figured I could get by with my one pair. Alas, in my mothers view, they — at least my pair — don’t constitute real dress pants.

This is because all my pants that aren’t jeans — and I think most of them were purchased in the 1980s or early 90s — have extra pockets and, often, a little loop for a hammer.

At some point — and perhaps it still is, I don’t know – it became fashionable for some men’s pants to have a little loop for a hammer, even though they were worn by non-carpenters who didn’t need a little loop for a hammer.

My other non-jean pants are what I think are called “cargo pants” — the ones with extra pockets and pouches with velcro flaps at knee level.

To my mother’s eye, neither carpenter-style pants, nor cargo-style pants, nor  “casual pants” of any ilk qualify as dress pants.

In my defense, I ditched many of my belongings, possibly including some “dress pants,” before Ace and I began our travels. Maybe I figured I would be attending few formal functions on the road, and would be more likely to need pants with a little loop for a hammer.

Besides, I never liked “dress pants.” They are too billowy. I need pants that I know are there, that embrace me. It’s probably the same concept as that Temple Grandin hugging machine, or the Thundershirt.

With Thanksgiving coming up, I’ve been invited to join some friends of hers –  my mother, not Temple Grandin – at the retirement community for dinner, so again last weekend, the subject of “dress pants” arose.

“Do you even have any dress pants?” she asked.

“These are dress pants.”

“Dress pants don’t have little loops for hammers.”

“Well you can do other things with the little loop,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Nothing I can think of right off, but I’m sure there are other, more formal uses.”

The interesting thing about this tension — and what is Thanksgiving without some family tension? — is that it’s a carryover from my teen-aged years, a good 40 years past, when we’d have many an argument, more heated than the ones we have now, about appearance and especially the length of my hair at the time.

Recently, in going through her papers, with her permission of course, I found a letter I had written her one summer during my college years, lecturing her on how it was what is in one’s heart that was important, not the clothes upon one’s back or the length of one’s hair.

Such a sanctimonious little wannabe hippy I was.

Anyway, with Thanksgiving approaching, I have three options. Plan A is to wear a suit (I do have a suit). Plan B (because I do like to sometimes irritate my mother) is to wear my pants with a little loop for a hammer and actually put a hammer in the little loop. Plan C (because I also like to, on rare occasion, make her happy) is to go buy some “nice dress pants.”

Plan C is highly unlikely. (But I did get a haircut yesterday.)

I’m leaning toward the suit, or at least the pants from the suit. Chances are they will be a little tight, but I think maybe with help from the claw end of a hammer, I can squeeze into them.

Now where did I put my hammer?