I was always told that the Lord looked out for fools, drunks and babies. It has been a long, very long, time since I was a baby and I don't drink (hardly at all, anyway) so that leaves me with a sad glimpse at the standing I may have in His eyes since He almost always makes sure that I have what I need in this world.
This time, for instance, He sent me a televised news item about a pair of Nordstrom jeans. Now, I always thought that I knew about jeans since I have spent my entire life in them but it seems that jeans, too, have left me behind when they moved upscale with the population that likes to be thought of as upscale.
To me jeans were something that could be bought reasonably priced in a store — new and uncomfortable — or better yet, in a nearly new store already broken in and much, much less expensively. I rarely shopped for new clothes because of the use that I was going to put them to in the barn. Most of my friends felt the same way.
Of course there was that contradiction in terms called "dress jeans."
Dress jeans were your very best jeans that you wore out to a party with a cool shirt and maybe even a nice jacket and your good boots. That was as dressed up as anyone in my crowd got except for weddings and then only if you were the bride or had gotten roped into being in the wedding party.
But back to the Nordstrom jeans, which is where we started. Nordstrom has come out with what they call "heavily distressed" jeans. No, they are not artificially laddered with runs. What they are is artificially layered with, um, well, brown stains.
My, my, what will the wealthy work-shy masses think of next?
The brown stains are very lifelike and they are guaranteed not to wash out either. I had some jeans with stains like that. In fact when I got stains like that on my jeans it was often because I had been pushing a machine that had gotten hung up in the deep mud near the manure pile and I had been in the direct line of its tires when they finally got traction enough to move forward.
Of course my brown stains were not only realistic they were real and I had the sense to shuck them off and run them under the frost free pump in the barnyard before I insulted my washing machine with them. There is only so much that you can expect of a washing machine, you know? Fair is fair, no matter what the manufacturer says.
There is yet another difference between my jeans ($40 tops in the store or, better yet, $10 or less in the nearly new places) and the Nordstrom store jeans. Theirs retail at about $425! It never fails to amaze me what a person will spend on itself in order to pretend that it has a grasp on the real world. And yet, if offered the chance to create their own jeans that look like that, I have to assume that those same persons would run screaming to the nearest coffee shop and hide behind the largest combination of coffee/chocolate/whipped cream they could buy quaking with outrage. It's the way it is. They may have the money to waste but we have all the good stories about how our jeans got that way.
On another point entirely I am finding out about what it takes to go a little bit upscale myself and the devil is absolutely in the details, I do assure you. After retiring from any useful horse work and taking up writing and art as ways to eke out a bit of a living I have been actually selling paintings. So who knew?
Because of that I have been invited to put my paintings in a new gallery in Frederick for the month of May.
May in Maryland is Preakness time and I am known for painting horses. Usually most people will admit that I can paint a recognizable horse or on a good day even a dog or cat.
The gallery is GWC Art Studio at 328 E. Patrick Street in Frederick, and I'll have 16 or so paintings of mine there with other people's paintings too. As the month goes on there might be fewer paintings but that may be an overly optimistic assessment of the eventualities. If y'all are absolutely at loose ends one day this might be a good way to spend a little time in a nice small city in Maryland. GWC Art Studio is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but call ahead at 301-639-6657 anyway.
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