Dad's Work Clothes

Dad's winter work clothes did extra duty one summer when we used them to make a scarecrow to try to scare the crows from eating his peaches. Not sure if the scarecrow worked but it did give my sister (at right) and me a chance to show off our new matching dresses.

My mother has a house full of stuff that needs to go either to charity or (more appropriately) to a dumpster, so lately I've been asking her from time to time if there is anything she has that she would like me to get rid of. It was much to my surprise when, a few days ago, she said she had a few things.

They were my father's work clothes.

Worn, torn, spattered with paint, frayed at the collars and thinning at the knees, they were now washed and neatly folded for the Goodwill. Truth be told, they are in such bad shape, Ted Kaczynski in his living-in-the-Montana-wilderness phase would likely have rejected them as too used up.

Dad washing the car. It's raining, which is why he's wearing an old work hat and jacket with his shorts!

"Your father won't be working in the yard anymore," my practical mother said. We now realize he was out there, working in the yard and trying to please her about two years beyond his abilities to do so. It wasn't until we discovered last year that he had a fractured pelvis from an unknown fall that we knew it to be true.

All my life Dad has spent his free time working outside. When he was a young man, working at his first professional engineering job, he thought nothing of spending two years of weekends building my parents' first home.

That's my sister up there in the wood frame of our first house. Never fear, she's being held firmly from behind by the large hand of my father, the home's contractor, chief carpenter, and engineer.

He framed it in redwood. That was okay then and he knew the first rate lumber was bug resistant and would last forever--though the house has recently been torn down anyway by some rich people for a McMansion. Dad probably still has the work clothes he wore on that project. He never threw anything away. But, later, he had summer work clothes he used for hot weather duty.

Dad, looking natty in his car wash work clothes. From afar you can't see how frayed they are.

And, he had even more abbreviated versions he used for lawn mowing and fruit-pick-up duty in the heat of a Bay Area summer.

Dad, working as usual, at our first house, lawn mower in background ... the push kind.

In the spring and fall, in later years, he had jeans and an old sweatshirt he wore. They are in the pile my mom just gave me to give away.

The jeans-and-sweatshirt work clothes were used when he used to walk the neighbor's dog Sunny. The owner had cancer and he didn't want the young lab to be bored while he was ill. Sunny is old and sick now, as is my father, and they are still friends.

So, of all the junk that needs to be disposed of at my parents' home, Dad's work clothes are the junk I least want to give away. They are in the trunk of my car now. But I don't think they will go to the Goodwill. At least not yet.

I want to have them with me, just a while longer.

That's me, dressed up as Dad, having a laugh.



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