My Wardrobe
The Bronx 1947
World War II finally came to an end. My brother completed his service in the MerchantMarine and left for Montreal to apprentice in our uncle’s dress factory. Consequently, neither the clothing he had outgrown nor his GI issue dominated my wardrobe.
Shirts were no problem. My father mastered the art of turning worn collars. Long sleeved shirts became short-sleeved shirts and when their collars frayed, some evolved into pajama tops. But what about pants? How much cuff and seam could be let out from the pants of a growing teenager?
I was about to step over the threshold from the carefree pre-pubescent years and enter the carefree teen-age years. Assisting in this transition were the androgens, the new kid on the block; the hormone that informed me there was an opposite sex. These chemical messengers directed me to declare an armistice with the enemy, females.
How do I attract them? The plants have an easy time of it. Their brilliant colors and wonderful scents invite insects to complete their reproductive mission. Animals, endowed with bright colors announcing their availability combine these tints with tantalizing fragrances called pheromones. These seducers are synchronized with their mating season. Wouldn’t it be nice if humans produced pheromones and were programmed for seasonal synchronization? Unfortunately we are cursed with hormones that keep us aroused year round. Consequently, we are not endowed with the beguiling gifts of the flora and fauna.
I thought, perhaps, my dexterity on the ice or my athletic performance on our asphalt streets would be my mating call. No response. Consequently, I focused on an updated wardrobe.
The reasonable solution was found in an innocuous storefront discovered by my friend, Alvin Lakind. It was tucked into the northwest corner of Crotona and Tremont Avenues in the Bronx. With no sign announcing the nature of the business, a window painted black halfway was its landmark.
Upon opening the door, you hurdled, stepped on, and knocked over tightly wound remnants in order to locate the proprietor. With a cigarette seemingly stapled to his lower lip, he could be found at the rear of the store, bent over a humming sewing machine, illuminated by the only light bulb in the store. This was the legendary Pop Meyer.
For five dollars he created a custom-made pair of pants. First you selected the remnant. Then you apprehensively carried it to Pop in order to determine whether there was enough fabric for your size. A positive reply meant he could sew a pair of pants somewhat following the outline of the lower torso. Thanks to Pop, for the first time, I owned two virgin, unaltered pairs of pants designed for me and me alone.
The summer of my junior year in high school portended a rise in my economic status. I was hired as a bus boy at The Central Hotel in Ellenville, a summer resort in the Catskill Mountains. A pair of navy blue pants and a white shirt was the uniform of the day, every day. Neither of my Pop’s brown or gray pants qualified, so I was off to Pop again.
My friends, Alvin with his great sense of humor, and Irv who towered over me came along as mayvens. They were frequent customers, which gave them license to give Pop a hard time. We entered the store.
“Pop,” shouted Irv. “He needs a pair of pants.”
”So, tell him what to do. I’m busy.”
As I began quarrying for a navy blue fabric, I heard Alvin yell,
“Iwo Jima positions take!”
He ran up a huge pile remnants near the window and pretending it was Mt. Surabachi on Iwo Jima planted a yardstick into is peak and then saluted. As if they were rehearsed specifically for the occasion, a flow of searing invectives hitched a ride on the spray of Pop’s saliva.
“Son nom a bitch, bestid” and some foreign curses ricocheted off the lonely bulb dangling in front of him. Where he picked up these choice expressions was beyond me. Irv told me that he never left his store. Finally, I found a navy blue remnant.
“I need them today, Pop.”
With a mouth dry from lubricating the profanity that had just flowed from it, he rasped, “In a half an hour.”
He removed the twisted and wrinkled cloth yellow tape measure from around his neck, measured my inseam and waist then sent us away.
We returned in thirty minutes.
“They’re done but they’re not pressed,” said Pop. “Come back in ten minutes.”
We returned in ten minutes. As I opened the door, Alvin and Irv erupted with a crystal shattering,
“Press the blues!”
With a throat depleted dry from his glossary of obscenities he shouted,
“Verr gehahrget (drop dead); dey’re pressed!”
Still warm from the steam iron, I carried the blues home folded over my arm vainly trying to avoid wrinkles. My tender treatment of these pants was no harbinger of what was to become.
As the days of bussing tables at the Central Hotel passed, the suppleness of the blues was replaced by a congealed veneer of comestibles oozing from my clients plates and from the corners of their mouths. By summer’s end these pants chronicled a sample of every meal served at The Central Hotel. They joined the leftovers from the last meal served that season; that is, in the garbage pail.
My remaining “Pop Meyers” were not the magnet I had expected them to be. The only thing they attracted was a hot iron and a wet rag to smooth out the wrinkles they accumulated whenever I wore them.
Varsity football was in its second year (1947) after WWII. Two weeks of grueling practice saw me staggering the mile stretch home as if I were running the last leg of a marathon. Doc Wiedman, our coach, called the names of the candidates who survived the cut. I heard my name. At 5’6″, 126 pounds, I was proud to have endured the punishing practices and played well when given a rare opportunity.
I thought I earned yellow and red varsity football jacket. The aches, the pains, the bruises gave me license to wear it. After working at The Central Hotel the past summer, I could afford the eighteen dollars. But in my mind, I rationalized the denial of this luxury.
“It was my senior year. How long would I wear it?”
“Bright red and canary yellow was an ugly color combination.”
“The jackets are beginning to pill on the players who had already bought them.”
“Red clashed with my ruddy complexion.”
This long-winded justification convinced me that not buying that ugly red and yellow, pilling jacket was the right thing to do.
The real world waited after a twelve-year journey through public education. Rolled into my 1948 high school diploma was the post war recession. College was not a consideration. After seeing my father overcome with fatigue, slowly hobbling down the elevated subway steps when returning from work and then sipping a two-cent seltzer at the candy store adjacent to the station, I felt obliged to reduce the strain on this kind and gentle man. So, off I went to the employment agencies in lower Manhattan.
“Make sure you wear a jacket!” my father advised.
My brother’s slate blue, tropical worsted sport jacket hung in my parent’s closet where he had left it before leaving for Montreal. Tropical worsted was not de rigueur in the month of March but it fit fairly well over a thick, woolen sweater. Unfortunately, the sleeves were not cooperative. The sleeves meandered past my wrists and introduced themselves to my fingernails. Cleverly, I decided to bend my arms creating an “L”. This would withdraw the sleeves from my fingers to my wrists.
I left for the E. 174th St. subway station. As I passed Misek’s Deli, the sleeves started wandering towards my fingertips. By the time I had reached the Dover Theater, the sleeves were out of control. I began to raise my arms in hallelujah fashion in order to get the damn sleeves to retreat.
At last, I reached the subway station and settled into a seat. With each turn of the train, the woven bamboo subway seats kept snagging my brown Pop Meyers, but the forty-five minute ride was a respite for my weary arms.
Numerous interviews informed me that after twelve years of schooling, my academic diploma qualified me as a messenger boy for fifty cents an hour. I was to pay the first week’s salary to the employment agency.
“What? I have to pay you a week’s pay for a fifty-cent an hour job?”
“That’s right,” said the secretary.
“No, that’s wrong. Shove it.” I replied and left.
My financial status improved when Loma Dress Corporation hired me as a billing clerk for seventy-five cents an hour.
These were depressed times but some mood elevating events in the world of fashion were taking place. The zipper fly made its debut. Of course, custom made pants cried out for the zipper fly and Pop Meyer, our custom tailor fell lockstep into fashion. However, Pop’s zippers, like the size of his remnants were determined by the idiosyncrasies of the job lots. So, if the zipper was long, the fly was long regardless for whom the pants were tailored.
Alvin, in a rust-colored tweed Pop-Meyer-Golden-Needle-Special had a zipper fly that must have been scheduled for a sleeping bag. It had teeth like Tyrannosaurus and was the length of a python resulting in a pair of pants whose waist ended under his armpits and a crotch extending from his chest to his knees. To annoy the women who were sitting on fruit boxes basking in the sun on the street, Irv would grasp Alvin’s fly and twist it into a braid while Alvin screamed and moaned to their horror and amusement.
For some of us, the Korean War put us into a pair of pants and jacket that matched and fit. The price we had to pay was being drafted. Unlike WWII, this was an unpopular and now a forgotten war. Economic conditions improved while my father’s health deteriorated. He slavishly continued finishing women’s overcoats in spite of a failing heart. By this time I was discharged from the army. I realized a college education would provide me with opportunities that were never open to my father. With $110 a month from the G.I. Bill, supplemented by working on a truck with Alvin collecting fat, bones and chicken guts from butchers in Manhattan, and attending City College at night, I was able finish college in four years.
Known as the O.D. Kid to my college classmates, my wardrobe consisted of an Ike jacket, woolen GI pants and a T-shirt (no logo). The crease in my woolen pants remained sharp for months. When it became dull, I would hone it with a damp rag and a hot iron. My Ike jacket, the fashion rage of the hippies in the 60s, held off the biting winter winds whistling down City College’s Convent Avenue in the mid 50s.
Graduation and a real job! A high school biology teacher! This required at least two suits, a sport jacket with a matching pair of pants.
“A suit you need? You never wore suits. Wait for a sale,” my mother counseled.
“Wait for a sale? He needs it now!” my father replied.
The debate ended when Moish sold me two high quality suits that “fell off a truck” in the Garment District”.
I am now retired after 35 years of teaching. I am happily married. My wife and my children are the major contributors to this bliss although tragically, I lost a dear son in 1995. The major source of friction between my wife and myself is the paucity and color of my wardrobe, the selection of my apparel, and when and where to wear it. Pop Myer, where are you when I need you?