Friday, November 11, 2011

Corduroy

Yikes, it's been a busy week and although busy not especially exciting and I've neglected my blog. So.

I just heard on the Bob and Tom radio show that besides the fact that today is 11/11/11 and there are some kids they mentioned who are turning 11 today, it is also National Corduroy Day. National Corduroy Day is on 11/11 each year because the numbers look like corduroy. Bet you had never heard of National Corduroy Day before, I know I haven't.

Now, corduroy is not something I think about much because it seems that it's kind of gone out of fashion and I can't remember having seen anything made out of corduroy in the stores lately, but when I was in high school in the early seventies, corduroy was the height of fashion. I think partly because jeans were still considered a little bit bad and only worn by greasers who carried their cigarettes around rolled up in their t-shirt sleeve and had a comb for their greasy hair in their back pocket. Think James Dean here. I don't think jeans were even allowed in school when I was in Junior High, never mind girls wearing ANY kind of pants to school. That all changed when I was in 9th grade and the dress code was modified to allow girls to wear pants to school. That freedom is still something I remember fondly.

Anyway. Corduroy. You know, that kind of strange fluffy ribbed fabric? Back in those seventies high school days corduroy pants were definitely in style, so much in style that we just called them Cords. I'm wearing my Cords today. Jeans were called Levis whether or not they were actual Levi Strauss brand, but if you wore anything other than Levi Strauss brand with the patch on the back that told what size they were, you might as well forget about being asked to the prom because you were a GEEK. Girls didn't buy Levis or Cords specifically made for girls, we went to the boys department and bought boy pants. But how embarrassing if you were kind of fat and your waist size was on the back of your pants for the whole world to see. We also bought them big enough to where they would hang off your hips instead of your waist because along with Levis and Cords being in style, hip huggers as we called them were also in style. So you wanted your pants to hang low but not like these kids today who wear them completely under their bottoms and have to walk funny so their pants won't fall down.

The only thing bad about our Cords was that if you had chubby thighs, the pants legs would rub against each other as you walked and your Cords would make that whoop whoop sound. So everybody around you could hear you coming and also knew that you had fat thighs without even having to look at you.

Those Cords also came in all kinds of colors, burgundy being popular along with a kind of burnt orange color, bright blue, red, just about any kind of color of pants that you would never ever see kids wearing today. They also came in straight leg or our favorite bell bottoms. The more you wore and washed them, the softer they would get. If they started to get holes in them, you would patch them patchwork quilt hippie style and be even cooler. I do remember the legend about the guy who didn't have a single piece of the original fabric of his pants left, the entire pants were patchwork.

Anyway, other than thinking about corduroy pants today, I keep waking up at 5 since the time change this week and actually don't mind getting up earlier because there are so many things I want to get done each day and so many projects on my work table. So, now I'm going to get back to them.

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Kohls has corduroy pants. They are making a come back!

DancingMooney said...

the time change has been messing me up all week too, but I think I'm getting the hang of it now. ;)

DancingMooney said...

p.s. Jennifer is right, cords are making a come back! ;)