The Hole in My Pocket
As a storyteller, I often quip to people that when and if I ever write my proper autobiography (as though these blog stories don’t effectively do that already), I already have a title all picked out for it. I am a big title guy and often use a title to lead me into or out of a story. I guess there is a part of this storyteller that is also a journalist that feels he needs to grab people’s attention with a snappy title. The title for my autobiography will be The Hole in My Pocket. I have also often said that I have little or no respect for either money or food and that characteristic, as unreasonable as it sounds to most people who think about it, is something not said tongue-in-cheek, but I genuinely mean it. It might be my rationalization as to why I run through both without much care. I am sure that if I ever suffered from a severe lack of either, it would leave an indelible mark on my soul and make me less able to take that attitude, but that has not been the case up until now at the not-so-wise old age of almost seventy.
It is said that we are what we eat. It is also often said that we actually wear what we eat, which can mean glued to our hips or roly-poly bellies, or perhaps, in my case, wearing what I eat on my shirt front, which has always been an affliction that probably correlates with the roly-poly belly. But genetically speaking, I seem to be somewhat blessed by the fact that so far (and I say that with the caution of wanting to not speak too soon) I am less of what I eat than other people.
The money affliction I also consider somewhat genetic, but more a learned trait from my mother. She just never seemed to worry about money. She had what she needed and lived a good life, never seeming to want for anything she couldn’t just go out and get for herself. I truly can’t think of anything that my mother wanted and didn’t get in life. That wasn’t because she was so privileged or wealthy, because she was neither. She was the fifth child of a large immigrant family living on a hardscrabble farm in backwater Upstate New York. There was very little privilege there that she did not create for herself. She did that through education and drive as well as having a joie de vivre that was noticeable to all that knew her for her 100 years. She saw the world, led an interesting and fulfilling life and wanted for nothing. Her approach to money was that if she needed some, she would just decide to go out and get it. The way I have come to interpret that is to think that I can always make more of it if I start running low. And so far, that has worked for me. Hence, I do not put undue emphasis on money if I can avoid it. I am far more likely to say “What the hell!” to some unexpected expense, but I sense that that is starting to change.
In fact, it may be changing for both food and money. Food has gone from being an afterthought to being something I more often than not prefer to take less of rather than more. Now that’s a funny turn of events, right? I’m hardly wasting away, but I will say that my recent gardening flourish has taken 10-12 pounds off my keister already this spring. As for money, I find myself having some interesting thoughts these days. One of them relates to my wardrobe, something I don’t recall thinking much about in a financial sense since my earliest days on Wall Street.
Back in 1976 when I was getting my MBA and heading to NYC for my first real job with Bankers Trust Company on Park Avenue, I owned two suits that I had bought at SYMs, which was one of the original clothing discounters following in the footsteps of the OG or clothing discounters, Filene’s Basement. Say SYMs had these big box stores with racks as far as the eye could see. In those days, Big & Tall stores barely existed, so I went to SYMs and bought a blue and a grey chalk stripe suit. Those were my interview suits. Once I had the job I went back and did what everyone told me to do, which was to shop based on what I saw around me at the office. Un fortunately for me, I worked in the Europe Division that first summer and I had no idea that European bankers dressed differently that American bankers. I bought a light blue and a coral colored suit, which seemed like it would fit in perfectly. I remember a guy in my training class who had gone to Columbia and wore exclusively J. Press three-piece suits, telling me that that I should never wear either of those two suits again unless I wanted to get assigned to an operating area of the bank. He was trying to be helpful, but was horrified that my father hadn’t taught me better. But I didn’t have a father in my life to give me those tips, so those two Europe Division suits went to the back of the closet and I gradually found Bancroft $89.95 suits (on display in their Madison Avenue window like a discount can of beans) to replace them.
When I got out of the training program, I was assigned to the New England Division, working with an old-timer named John Allen. John was 62 years old , had gone to Dartmouth (he grew up in Dixville Notch, even further north than Dartmouth), stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day and was whippet thin. He also smoked like a chimney and drank scotch by the gallon, but not so you could ever tell from his demeanor. John took on the role of surrogate father to me and told me to go buy oxford blue and white button-down shirts at Brooks Brothers when they were on sale. He told me they would last forever and that when they did start to fray at the cuff or collar, those parts could be removed by a seamstress and turned inside out to get another few years out of them. The blue or white was standard fare and basically allowed you to choose any tie you wanted and it would go with the shirt. A standard guy insult in those days was to tell a guy that his tie was the only one you had ever seen that didn’t go with a white shirt. Johnny also taught me to only buy black socks because who needed to mess with sock color in the morning. The other thing he told me was that I had no choice but to have my shirts laundered because ironing shirts was too old fashioned. He said it cost $1 per shirt, so I had better try to get two days of wear out of each shirt before tossing it into the laundry.
One of the other things John told me (though I suspect he was kidding) was to always keep one old shirt with a few holes in the elbows to wear on the day when you went in to ask for a raise. Having a holy elbow and a frayed collar made a strong statement of need in his Puritanical book.
Today, I am heading off for my last class of the semester and this is one of the occasions when I actually put one of my 300 or so custom-made shirts (all button-down and mostly still some variation of blue or white). I cut my suit inventory down to about a dozen from about three times that amount when I retired. I have to go into my closet now and change my shirt before I head out because I see I have a hole in it on my right hand stomach side. I have no idea how I got it and I have no intention of buying more dress shirts at this point in my life, so I guess I will have the laundry sew that up for me and I will use the shirt for working in the yard or something. I may have a hole in my pocket, but Johnny Allen would turn over in his grave if I just tossed out a perfectly good “I need a raise” shirt like this. You never know when you’re gonna need a raise.