Denim jacket not big on warmth - just on memories

I got to thinking about an old friend the other day.

My denim jacket.

I was swapping stories with someone about my Sears catalog leather fringe jacket, kind of like the one Dennis Hopper wore in the 1969 flick “Easy Rider.”

It’s not a very warm jacket so it doesn’t get much wear.

I put it on when I want to bring out my “inner hippie.”

But that denim jacket, that had some stories.

I bought it back in 1972, the glory days of denim.

Denim this, denim that, denim button-fly bell bottom jeans, denim shirts and such.

It was a Lee brand denim jacket. They still make them.

But my 1972 denim jacket didn’t cost $55 to $100 like they are offering online today.

The figure $19 seems to be in my head for the cost.

Other denim brands were too thick to my liking, but those Lee jeans fit nice and were comfortable.

So was the jacket.

That Lee denim is what they sold at the Army Navy Store downtown in my hometown back east in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

They sold other stuff too, like the combat boots I’d buy for my hikes with my Boy Scout troop.

It was my buddy Catfish who, one fall day, declared he and I needed to go downtown and buy “jean jackets,” as we called them.

We hopped in his Gremlin, a car of the day, and zipped on downtown.

After we bought the jackets we stood there outside the Army Navy Store.

“Now we need to put some wear on ’em,” Catfish said.

So we drove back to Catfish’s house.

Here in the future, they charge you extra to have jeans with holes in them or made to look like they’ve been worn.

In 1972 we got it free.

Catfish got some rope, and we tied the jackets to the back of the Gremlin, tied them so they dragged behind the car.

We drove this way and that way around our neighborhood, up one street, down another, pausing every now and then for me to go back to the jackets and flip them to even out the sides so one side didn’t look more worn than the other.

After I don’t know how long we retrieved our new jackets and called it a day.

At my house I asked my grandma if she’d wash my new jacket.

I should mention I was living with my grandparents while Dad and Mom were somewhere I don’t remember at my dad’s faraway job.

“Boy, did you buy this at the thrift shop? It’s worn,” she said.

“No Grandma, it’s brand new. Me and Catfish just put some wear on it by dragging it around behind his car,” I said.

I don’t remember what my grandma said to that but I’m sure she questioned my intelligence.

My jean jacket went with me through high school, on into college, out on dates, to most of the great concerts I saw in the ’70s, on into the days of me and my kids and with me to The Great American Southwest..

Alas, my jean jacket vanished during my Albuquerque days.

Somebody desired it and swiped it at a house party, never to be seen again.

These days when it comes to jackets I want something to keep me warm.

I have to admit while my jean jacket looked cool, it wasn’t big on warmth.

But it was big on memories.

Grant McGee writes for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him:

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