333 Shelbume Road, Burlington, VT, 05401 I

Terry Lug!
mlxlixgcuaht
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1.800.833.5945
802.660.8099 X107
999.7351

    

 

y friend the pianist called

me a clothes-horse. Moi!

Who only buys what's
left at the 50% off sale-price clear-
ance sales, thrift stores and garage
sales. Me, whose daily uniform
consists of jeans and a long-
sleeved shirt or jeans and a short-
sleeved shirt. With the same vest

' day in and day out, changing only

with the season.

The pianist and the handy dyke
are helping me to move. While the
handy dyke was a whirlwind of
touching up, repairing, watering,
cleaning and hauling, the pianist
surveyed my closet in preparation
for packing. I had to beg her to
explain why she was doubled over
hiding suppressed laughter behind
her hand. ,

“Butch clothes horses!” she
spluttered.

“What?” I asked. All I saw was
the bathrobe my mother sent me sev-
eral years ago, a robe too girly for
me to wear, but which might come
in handy for a guest. Oh, and some
flannel shirts that are two small for

 

me at present and some other flarmel
shirtswaiting for cold weather and
some short-sleeved flannel shirts that
I can wear about twice a year during
a brief_ window of just-right weather.
Why was she laughing?

It’s true that Ihave a tendency
to buy two of an item I like, or
more if the price is irresistible. The
handy dyke and the pianist and I
once stopped at an unpromising-_
looking end-of—day garage-sale
fund-raiser being held in a hard-to-

access comer of a football stadium.‘_

- The handy dyke didn’t even bother

to get out of the van, but I found
four comfy-large quality sweat-
shirts, hardly worn, for a quarter

‘ apiece. I had no problem with two

advertising Disneyland —- I thought
it was a hoot, never having been
there — another portraying Tweety
Bird, or the fourth, which was col-
ored a garish green. At an earlier
garage sale that day I’d nabbed
another oversized sweatshirt sim-
ply because it hailed from
Steamboat, Iowa, a great name for

.a Midwestern town. Does that

make me a clothes horse?

Once in a while I do spend real
money on clothes, usually on vests.
I like a light vest I can wear daily
in the summer, to stash wallet,
keys, cell phone", PDA, something

to read and other necessities of life. ‘

My old one was so ratty I inten-
sively researched a replacement on
line and found the most economi-
cal, well-vented and multi-pocket-

' ed at amateurgeologist.com.

Yesterday, while checking out "at a
store where pre-season flannel

-shirts were selling for. $5.99 (I only

bought two), the cashier admired
my vest, commenting that they
were better .than purses. Then she
grievously wounded me by sharing
that she’d found hers at Goodwill.

  
    

uch Clothe Horse

Also, I admit that I am weak
when it comes to catalogues like
The Territory Ahead and have suc-
cumbed to three of their nifty,
immortal and overpriced vests in
the past decade.

A fewayears ago I signed on for
an L.L. Bean credit card in order to
get an additional discount on a
clearance item — rain pants -- at ‘
one of their outlets. Shipping is
free with the card, as it used to be
when I first ordered from them
decades ago. Bean rewards me
with coupons. Pretty simultaneous-
ly I fell in love with L.L. Bean
two-chest-pocket sunwashed can-
vas shirts and figured out, if I wait-
ed for them to go on sale, which
they have every year so far, I could
collect most of the colors, one or
two a year, free. The pianist had
not even gotten to that rainbow-
colored part of my closet when she
had her laughing fit.

My clothing inventory (which
certainly does not make me a butch
clothes horse) is complicated by
weight gains and losses for the last
twenty years. Why discard my size
32 jeans when I am sure to fit in
them as soon as I lose this weight
again? Or the size 34s? Ad infini-

tum.  mother yusedvtodo storage

by seasons; I wonder h‘o:'w'rn‘any"
other daughters do it by weight.

I once got rid of all my small
and laundry-shrunk t-shirts and
kept only two for their sentimental
value. I know it’s time to do this _
again, but/darn, it al‘l,tl1q2!.t_’,,s|like‘ A

‘ giving vaway-’afi' 'ari$hiv::.' Souwhat if

I never wear them — thisyear the
local department stores put
Hawaiian—style shirts on the clear-
ance racks early in the season so-
my t-shirts got shortishrift. A

Does-this tendency to buy'.ahd~ ' if I

collect clothes makeme a clothes
horse? And isit a butch character-
istic? The handy dyke isn’t big on

. clothes, but then, she lives with the

’ laughing pianist. On the other

hand‘, I recently’ went out to play
with my friend" the librarian and
her partner. The librarian scored
from the clothes racks in both thrift
stores we visited. But who spotted‘
the shirts she couldn’t resist and
who brought them to her attention?
Her femme partner, of course. If
some butches‘(not me) are clothes
horses, who do we dress for? V