April 23, 2014 Article

The Old Coot is a fashion plate?

by Merlin Lessler

I walked out of the house the other day. A baloney sandwich in the left side pocket of my cargo pants, a water bottle in the right. A cell phone, note pad, pen, glasses and wallet completed the cargo that was snug and secure in one of the cleverly located spaces made for just such things. I’m so happy to live in the “cargo pant” era. You can walk down the street loaded with essentials and your hands swing free. I even had room for the other stuff I sometimes carry: lipstick, gloss, compact, blush and a perfume atomizer. But, my wife wasn’t with me, so extra space was available in my duds.

I don’t know who invented cargo pants (and shorts) for everyday use. The concept probably started in the military or as a field & stream garment. It doesn’t really matter; someone adopted it and started making cargo pants for regular people. Us old coots especially love them. We’re averse to going around with a backpack strapped to our shoulders; it makes us look like high school or college student wannabes. They’re foreign to us, not part of our history growing up. We didn't use backpacks when we went to school. We used nap sacks for hiking, but for school, we stumbled around balancing a two-foot stack of textbooks, notebooks and three ring binders on our hips, subjecting our selves to someone coming up from behind, shoving our books to the floor and chuckling, "Dropped a few subjects did you?"

Fanny packs are out too, for us old coots, who delude ourselves into thinking we’re hip. It's the name that does it. It too babyish, too un-cool. Maybe if the packs had been named, lumbar packs or belt carriers, we might have gone that route. It would have been a lot easier than what I do, go around with a canvas bag slung over one shoulder, so it’s technically not a backpack or a fanny pack. It’s frayed and unpretentious. I use it when I'm carrying more than my cargo pants can hold: a thermos of coffee, the Sunday Times and a wad of unfinished old coot articles that I hope to complete if I ever break through the writer’s block that's stopped me cold. My wife calls it a man purse, just to see me wince. I always protest, "It's not leather and doesn't look urbane; it's a writers bag, not a man purse!" She just laughs. 

I’m waiting for the next phase, the next evolution, cargo-suits for old coots. Two extra outside pockets on the pants, a pouch-pocket in the back of the jacket, big enough to hold a 10-inch tablet. We’ll be a lumpy bunch, us old coots, standing around at a wedding reception in pinstripe cargo suits, but we’ll be equipped for any eventuality. The outfit will be topped off with a cargo-tie, containing a secret pocket in back, just big enough to hold a smart phone so we can keep up on the scores of football, basketball, lacrosse and baseball games. Some people claim the greatest invention of the 20^th century was the computer, but they’re wrong. It was cargo pants!