Suits

            I was still in high school when I bought my first suit. Strictly speaking, it wasn't my first suit because I had a suit when I was fired off to church confirmation but that was about fifty or sixty pounds of muscle and bone earlier. This was a suit that I bought with money earned working summers on the Great Northern Railway. Wages were good and so was the suit.

            The cloth was a brown sharkskin. When the light fell on it at a different angle there was a shine of different colours revealed, like the scales of a fish through clear, cold water, but really understated. It was beautiful and I looked like a million bucks. I first wore it on a trip to play football against Skyline High School in the States. "Nice threads", said the coach.

            A couple of years later, I had my first and only suit made to measure at a tailor shop on Granville Street in Vancouver. I think it cost me 130 bucks, which was quite a bit considering wages were about $2.25 per hour. What a head turner! The cloth was a teal colour with a light gold vertical stripe, and the jacket fitted well from well padded shoulders to a double vent in the back. I went from the tailor shop down to the beach front walk at English Bay and was promptly nailed by a passing seagull right on my left shoulder. I wonder if he had something against teal with a stripe.

            I can't for the life of me remember what happened to those suits but they didn't follow me into the 1970s which was really a time of anti-suit.  When we got married in 1974, Betty & I came to Vancouver in search of wedding finery. We went to the men's wear shop on Granville where I had gotten the teal suit. I happened to be wearing a colourful African shirt that Betty had brought back from Barbados and asked the clerk for something flamboyant. "I'm sorry sir, I can't beat that" says he. We ended up with a white shirt covered in small blue flowers and a pair of navy cords instead of a wedding suit.

            The next suit that I bought was for my brother-in-law Rick's wedding in 1978 in Ontario. This was a beaut. Cream coloured polyester with bell bottomed slacks. Two pair of slacks were included, one pair to match the cream jacket and one pair a dark brown, with a vest that was reversible either cream or brown. My white shirt had large collar ends that were made for being open chested in the fashion of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Yowser.

            That was my last suit for twenty years. For dressy occasions, there were a number of blazers ranging from polyester to corduroy until 1999 when Auntie Enid had her 80th birthday in Victoria. I bought a nondescript but pleasant suit of indescribable colour and pattern, that I have worn to weddings and funerals, parties and business meetings. The inner me still yearns for a little daring sharkskin or a splash of teal with a gold stripe.