So… I think I’ve posted here in the past that I was not financially gifted as a young man. In fact I was dirt poor. I drove a 1964 Impala as a college student in 1978. I could tell you a hilarious story about that Impala, but I probably won’t since it was perhaps the single most humiliating moment in my entire life. And that’s saying something.

Well, anyway, as I was saying, I was a dirt poor college student in 1978, driving a 1964 Impala with much of the engine replaced from a place callled the “U-Pull-It Auto Parts.” Basically it was a junkyard and you could go in there with your tools and take stuff off of wrecked or abandoned cars and pay for it on your way out, with no warranties or guarantees, but a hearty “good luck!” thrown your way as you clambered back into your own jalopy which was no doubt heading to the same junkyard sooner than you’d like. (Actually that’s exactly what happened with the Impala, so in a sense it was a recycled car twice over….)

Being a poor college student really gives you an altered perspective on many of life’s little details. For example, I had to have a job to stay in school, so I worked at the “Electronic Program Learning Center” at the La. Tech library. My job was to run the electronic equipment at the library, including the audio and video tape recorders, the computer terminals and the record players. It’s sort of funny to think about it now, but we had this huge multi-track tape machine with multiple reel-to-reel feeds which we would play pre-recorded lessons (mostly language class lessons) over a distributed set of headphones. Students would have to schedule a session and we’d switch the audio feeds from the tape machine over the headsets so that students could complete their lessons. We could run up to four separate lessons at once. It was pretty cool.

It was there that I first played the computer game “Star Trek”, a game you had to play with a hand calculator to target your photon torpedoes. I got pretty good at that game…

But I digress, this isn’t about my college job, this is about The Dress Pants.

So, as I was saying, I was not associated at all with anything that could be called “wealth.” Going out for a pizza with my friends was actually a rare treat, and on weekends that I stayed on campus, I ate a lot of macaroni and cheese since the school’s cafeteria was only open on weekends for the athletes. Seriously.

One of the things you learn quickly when you are truly lacking in disposable income is that clothes cost real money. I mean REAL money. One pair of pants might cost as much as my entire dining budget for a week. Or two.

But I still tried to fit in and socialize with the rest of the crowd. Well, I don’t remember exactly the reason, but for some reason there was some event that required “Dress Pants.” By then my entire wardrobe had dwindled down to jeans, painter pants (remember those?) and some overalls. I did not own a pair of dress pants. But I wanted to go to this shindig anyway, so I set my mind to obtaining some dress pants.

My normal clothes shopping outlet at that time was the Goodwill store. And normally I could find a decent pair of dress pants there for a few bucks, but not this time. So I was hard pressed now to come up with a solution.

So it turned out that my stepmother had a sewing machine, but rarely used it…. Hmm…. How hard can it be to make a pair of pants? People do it all the time! It can’t be that hard. So I went back to Goodwill and found a used pattern for a pair of dress pants, and some fabric, for just a few bucks. No problem! I had a whole weekend to make the pants! Sweet!

So, late Saturday night I finally decided to start making the pants.

Early Sunday morning I realized that making pants is not easy. Regular pants, like jeans or something, are pretty easy, but it turns out that making pants with neat and crisp seams, even hems and proper belt loops is surprisingly hard. But I persevered… Cutting the materials was simple. Sewing them together was not too bad, especially when I realized that a poorly sewn seam could be ripped out and resewn. By about noon on Sunday I had completed the basic shape, had gotten the seams flat and even, had the hems even and the right length and had even managed to master the belt loops.

Then disaster struck.

Pockets.

OMG! Who designed this!? Dress pants don’t have pockets made by sewing an extra bit of material on the outside of your pants, a la jeans…. No! Dress Pants have pockets that are supposed to look like nearly invisible slits that open into an inner pouch that is somehow sewn flat into the thighs without ugly folds and fabric bunching where nothing should be protruding. Pockets are HARD! I struggled for hours to get the front pockets in so that when the pants were worn it didn’t look like you had a sandwich in your pocket. But I finally persevered… But it was too late! I had to get back to school, and the back pockets weren’t done!

I was devastated. My poor stepmother, who had repeatedly offered to finish the pants for me, finally came in and suggested that I simply sew in the pockets in back without all the critical detail that makes a back pocket tight and firm across the buttocks, and then to simply cover it up with a flap on each pocket. She showed me pictures of Dress Pants with flaps on the back pockets as a style item, and so that’s what I did.

And I don’t remember now why the pants were so critical, but I do remember that nobody seemed to notice anything unusual at all about my pants with the back pocket flaps.

I wore those pants for a couple more years before they wore out. Flaps and all…