The Mask of the Old Lone Ranger

The Mask of the Old Lone Ranger

In 1961 I was seven years old and intended to start second grade in that Fall at the Spring Harbor School in Madison, Wisconsin. We had moved that summer from Turrialba, Cost Rica and I was going to transition from a one-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the Institute where by mother worked and we lived, to a middle-American suburban grade school during what has come to be known as the “Wonder Years”. That situation only lasted several days until my mother, who was pursuing her Ph.D in Education at the University of Wisconsin (Go Badgers!) was called into the school and told I was unfit for second grade. Apparently, during those days in the one-room schoolhouse, I had picked up some vocabulary (and the spelling skills to go with it), the multiplication tables and the ability to write in cursive. That was considered unacceptable behavior and quite disruptive according to the Spring Harbor Grade School curriculum for second grade. The school sought my mother’s agreement to move me up to third grade immediately.

We can sit here and ask how difficult could that possibly be, but I assure you, at the age of seven and adjusting to a whole new country, not to mention the oncoming winter of Wisconsin, which is as harsh as the tropics are humid, its like climbing Mt. Everest. I spent third, fourth and fifth grade gradually, but surely, catching up and getting back to strong grades. I managed to do that half the time without eyeglasses when I was woefully nearsighted. I almost can’t imagine how I did it at all.

Meanwhile, at home, my mother was well into her dissertation and very busy with three kids at home and managing on a three-thousand dollar per year fellowship. I will not bore you with all the grade-school shenanigans I got into, but let’s just say I had a normal American childhood for the 1960’s. My sports were the sports of middle-America: baseball and football with lots of sledding over the schoolyard Indian bear-mound in the winter. I wore what all American boys in those days wore. Chinos and t-shirts pretty much like the boys in the movie Stand By Me wore on their fateful trip down the tracks. There were no “sports clothes” in those days unless you were in gym class or wearing a sponsored baseball jersey for little league. You played army and played sports in the same chinos and t-shirts that you wore to school. That fellowship only had $1,800 after rent for everything from utilities, food and clothing and that meant that the clothing budget was pretty much non-existent. I don’t remember where my mother got my clothes in those days, but I know I did not fit into 7,8, 9 or even 10-year-old pants. I suspect I wore 12-year-old pants during those years. In other words, I tended towards the big.

This will be obvious to most that were big kids, but perhaps not so much to those who were normal-sized children, but if you rough-house and play sports in school clothes that you are constantly outgrowing, you tend to split your pants with a good deal of regularity.. In addition to that, there was a thigh-rubbing thing that tended to wear away the insides of the crotch of one’s trousers. That left me with a problem of sartorial significance. My pants were almost always in disrepair.

My mother was simply too busy to bother with such trivia. Had I asked her to mend my trousers, I’m sure she would have done it for me, but when you grow up with a hard-working single mother working on her doctorate at the age of 45, you instinctively know to fend for yourself and not bother her with a sewing task. That left my two older sisters, the oldest of the two who went on to be an award-winning (Singer National Sewing Champion) seamstress. When you are three siblings tightly grouped within a three year window, that is a dynamic that doesn’t lend itself to sibling cooperation. In other words, good luck getting either of them to sew my pants. What’s a guy to do? You pick up a needle and thread or the bobbin on the Singer portable sewing machine and go at it. I learned how to sew by hand and by machine and became highly proficient at pants repair and occasional shirt button replacement. I even learned how to iron on patches for those annoying thigh-rubbed crotches and double up the cross-stitching for strength. I got more mileage out of a pair of chinos by a factor of three versus the other kids on the block.

None of this left any indelible scars unless all that thigh rubbing did damage to the flesh of my groin (I’ve never been flexible enough to check). I’m not sure it did anything to build character either, but it did leave me with a skill that has come in handy occasionally over the years. At home the repair work was undertaken by the housekeeper or the cleaners, but on the road I always had a little sewing kit tucked in a corner of my Dopp kit in case a button or a seam gave way. These things do happen on business trips. I once had a trip with our Vice Chairman and watched him blow out his suit pants from zipper to belt loops. It caused him to walk into a meeting with a raincoat around his waist and sit in a client’s office like that while the client’s assistant sewed the seam back together. It happens and if you can sew, you can save the day.

These days sewing has become a lost art. Who bothers anymore, what with stretch fabric (Lycra is everywhere these days). But you know that thing they say about riding a bike? Well, it’s true of sewing as well, so when the Coronavirus has now taken us to a place where we need face masks, my old skill set has suddenly kicked in.

Kim said she planned to sew us each a mask. I got her an old t-shirt from my motorcycle travels and asked her to make one for me from that. My natural laziness allowed me to allowed her to take on the task since I was pretty sure she was a good seamstress. After all, she did have a big Tupperware sewing basket with thread, needles, scissors and all the implements. I even gave her a New York Times pattern for a simple mask that would have made Butterick cry. She surprised me by coming back into the study in two hours to tell me that she was out. She couldn’t do it. We had a few leftover N95 masks which would do for us for now.

Well, I’ve been here before. My pants weren’t split, but it was Saturday and there was nowhere to go, and little to do. I took Kim’s Tupperware basket and the t-shirt and went to town. I free-formed it, which is my style, and just cut my way into an approximate shape and size which I thought might work. Why measure even once if you’re confident, right? I found thread, a needle and thimble (a tool I have always appreciated in my sewing). And then I found the stick-on Velcro strips. I went at it for 30 minutes and voila! I had a form-fitting Coronavirus mask that had my motorcycle logo and a southwestern canyon road scene and fit like a pair of Velcro sneakers. I could not have been prouder if I had made a mask for the Old Lone Ranger himself.