I am a creature of habit, boringly so.
Every day starts around the same time, with prayer, news, coffee, some time with my wife and animals, chores, then work. The music for the brief commute is the same (Sacred Prayer by Ironhelm, John 3:16 by Fjords of Faith.) I do vary my route, depending on whether I need to go to the Post Office or whether I remind myself that even if it is no longer 2020, it’s always a good idea to change one’s drive to work.
When I come home, Miss Rhonda always has me a cup of coffee and a glass of tea waiting. I always send her a text that I am on the lane and inside the gate.
I wear the same style clothes – dress-work pants, a vest, tie, dress shirt, comfortable shoes, and fedora. A jacket or coat, weather-depending.
Five, sometimes six days a week, my pockets are loaded the exact same way. Pocketknife in the right front pants pocket. Multitool in the side pocket. Wallet in the shirt pocket. Cigarettes and lighter in the left front vest pocket (preferably the top, if it’s a three-pocket vest.) My keys will either be clipped to a beltloop or in the left front pants pocket. Cell phones in a top right shirt pocket (when available), side pocket of the pants, or in a vest pocket. That changes during cooler weather when I wear a jacket or coat, but not substantially.
The daily load plan changes slightly for church or other more civilized occasions. Saturday has the most variation, since Saturdays may involve overalls as well as different needs for the day: wirecutting pliers, wrenches, a hammer, a specialized knife, a spare magazine for a handgun, empty brass, random rocks and bones, nails or screws, various small animals or all of the above, depending on the day’s activities.
Pockets have always been important to me; my mother, Miss Lois, used to sew additional pockets on some of my shirts and jackets. My beloved Miss Rhonda has done the same. The first nationally-published piece I ever wrote was a letter to a clothing company after I was gifted a multipocketed vest which was far more stylish than useful (although it was pretty darn useful). The title of that piece? I Have Pockets.
I am lost without pockets.
So imagine my consternation the other morning when I put on a new-to-me shirt and discovered there was no pocket.
I wanted to cup my hand to my ear and see if I could hear Gabrial’s horn blowing for the Second Coming.
I am peculiar about shirts: I don’t wear t-shirts as outerwear. If the situation is casual enough that a T-shirt is de rigeur, I will likely go without a shirt if I cannot for some reason wear my usual. My standard is always a collared, long sleeved, Oxford cut shirt; whether it’s a Brooks dress shirt, an everyday work shirt, or a rougher version in canvas, camouflage or flannel, that’s what I wear. I have nothing against other folks wearing golf or polo shirts, even if they play neither. I have nothing against those who like T-shirts as everyday wear. I just don’t wear those shirts. If the weather is hot, I’ll roll my sleeves; under some circumstances, I have been known to completely remove the sleeves.
But I always wear a collared, button front, long sleeved shirt.
And they always have a pocket.
Except for this one.
I likely looked like a low-rent version of Tarzan as I patted my chest trying to find the pockets on this new-to-me shirt. I actually loosened my tie and unbuttoned it to peer inside, to see if (like one of favorite shirts) it had security pockets inside, or if I might have put it on inside out.
Nope. No pockets.
One simply cannot have enough pockets, but at the very least, a man should have four on his pants and one on his shirt. That’s the bare minimum. Although no one carries a pocketwatch anymore, that odd little pouch on many men’s pants is far more useful than one might think.
Shirt pockets are not just civilized, they are necessary. As I noted above, mine always carry an ink pen or two, my wallet, sometimes a phone. My shirt pockets have carried baby possums, squirrels, rabbits and kittens. I have used them to collect sea shells, fiddler crabs, hickory nuts, pecans and blackberries (that wasn’t a wise choice).
Eddie Rickenbacher carried loose bullets in his shirt pocket when he was flying biplanes in World War I. A WWII aviator I knew carried a package of Lucky Strikes, a Zippo lighter, his wife’s photo and a rabbit’s foot, and still did so decades after the war. Charles Lindbergh carried a spare compass in his shirt pocket. The voluminous pockets of the shirts worn by soldiers both Northern and Southern in the War Between the States carried hardtack, Bibles, whiskey flasks, bandages and more. Medical people carry all kinds of hardware in their shirt pockets.
Were it not for shirt pockets, we might have lost the space race, since NASA engineers carried so many ink pens they needed plastic pocket protectors (their short sleeves aside). My father never had a pocket protector (leading to occasional growls from my mother) but he carried a small notebook and two ink pens in his shirt pocket.
Hence, shirt pockets are necessary for a man.
Except in the mind of whatever fluttering fashionista designed and marketed this one to a name brand manufacturer, who then passed it on to a retailer, who sold it to the previous owner, from whence it ended up in the Clarkton Clothing Exchange, finally filling a need for me, since I was running low on reputable dress shirts.
What’s next? Pants without pockets? If so, how does one carry a pocketknife? I understand that due to the advances of technology, fewer and fewer people carry wallets, checkbooks, pens, pencils and notebooks – never mind address books or business card carriers, both of which have long since gone the way of commonsense in Washington and Raleigh.
But I do not see how one can function without pockets.
I will continue to wear that particular shirt, because it’s comfortable, looks decent and doesn’t have any mysterious stains that could be collected from and compared to DNA found at a crime scene. I will, if the occasion requires, go back to that neat little store in Clarkton, because Joe the owner is a nice guy, and the young lady running the store is destined for greater things.
But I can assure you that the next time I buy a shirt, before I check the tag with the size and country of manufacture, before I check to see the type of fabric, before I check to see if the buttonholes are well made – the first thing I will do is look for pockets.
Because a world without pockets would be uncivilized.
