The End.
It could be the end if I’d just stop. But...
The Beginning: Autumn.
Fall in the South gives us a nice break from brutal summertime temperatures. There’s a lot to like.
Freshly-dug peanuts, flowing fields of cotton, apples, beautiful foliage and
…fire!
A good fire on a cool evening cannot be topped. It’s great company. You can just sit and watch it. Maybe while sipping a little warm apple cider or hot cocoa.
Probably not cider or cocoa
But as cool turns to cold, this is when I have trouble dealing. After 8 or 9 months in shorts, I’m allergic to anything on my legs.
I’ve tried different ways to deal with this ‘allergy,’ including pants with the zip-off legs.
Those pants are great for anything outdoors that begins in the cool of the morning and finishes in the warmer part of the day. Say, a hike or a round of golf.
On just such a day recently when I couldn’t make up my mind between pants and shorts, I experimented.
-photo courtesy of Mark Megaw’s Maybe You Should Just Stay Home. In stores everywhere.
Having one leg off and one leg on, not a great look.
But it’s not just pants. It’s everything. It’s clothes. I don’t like ‘em.
Most anything I wear anytime is lightweight, soft and covers as little of my body as I can get away with and still have friends.
Short sleeved shirts, footies and athletic shorts so that I don’t have to wear a belt. That’s Tibby style.
By the way, here’s the unspoken dealio with belts and older men: They’re useless.
The belts, I mean. OK, probably both. But belts for now.
They are meant to catch on your butt and hold your pants up. But whether a man’s butt slides down his legs or evaporates, it gets gone somehow. There’s virtually nothing for the belt to rest on.
There have been a couple of weddings recently I’ve been forced – forced, I tell you! – to attend, requiring nicer attire.
Nicer clothes require a belt. So I rummaged around in the closet until I found one.
It had mildew on it. Or mold. Perhaps it’s fading to dust.
I think the time has finally come to go to Waddle-mart, buy me some shorts with elastic waistbands and move to Florida.