\nI shopped<\/strong><\/span> at all the right stores and was somewhat stylish. But then, around ninth grade, I slipped up. I couldn\u2019t keep up with the fads. A friend of my father was a rep for Farah pants. I liked Farah, but Farah wasn\u2019t Lee and Lee wasn\u2019t Levi\u2019s. Farah was mostly the iridescent sharkskin look — the greaser look. I was not a greaser.<\/p>\n
Greasers — at least at my school — clung to the Farah \u201cContinental\u201d greaser look for many years. “Collegiates” was\u00a0 my crowd. Collegiates wore Lee jeans. Blue jeans weren\u2019t permitted, but colored Lee jeans were. (Aside: greaser<\/em> wasn’t a word when I was dealing with greasers. Greasers were “racks,” short for racketeers.)<\/p>\n I shopped at Cedar Center, at both Mister Jr. and Skall\u2019s Men\u2019s Wear. Ben Skall was dapper and ultimately became a state senator. I gave up white socks just so I could enter Skall\u2019s. I bought black socks with gray rings around the top (Adler brand) at Skall’s. Cleveland Indians players Sam McDowell and Hawk Harrelson shopped at Skall\u2019s.<\/p>\n I failed in fashion. I occasionally got \u201cmocked out\u201d at school for dressing wrong. I once wore a spread-collar shirt. That was strictly verboten. It had to be button down.<\/p>\n Wrong (L) \/ Right (R). Bert Stratton, early 1960s. junior high.<\/p>\n I also<\/span> <\/strong>wore homemade clothes, such as a sweater my mom knitted. Homemade was also verboten, but a girl complimented me, so I kept wearing the sweater. The peak of my fashion phase was when I wore a shirt jac and light-blue denim pants. The shirt jac didn\u2019t tuck in.<\/p>\n Sweaters, generally, weren\u2019t my thing. Note: the alpaca sweater was the true Continental statement. Not for me. Alpaca was very itchy. A cashmere V-neck collegiate sweater suited me. I had a comfy one, the color was \u201csummer wheat.\u201d<\/p>\n I exited the fashion world about the time I started hanging out almost exclusively with grade-grubbing nerds. Tenth grade. (Nerds<\/em> wasn\u2019t a word yet. We were “dips,” probably short for dipshits<\/em>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I shopped at all the right stores and was somewhat stylish. But then, around ninth grade, I slipped up. I couldn\u2019t keep up with the fads. A friend of my father was a rep for Farah pants. I liked Farah, but Farah wasn\u2019t Lee and Lee wasn\u2019t Levi\u2019s. Farah was mostly the iridescent sharkskin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30932"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31006,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30932\/revisions\/31006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/shirts-junior-high-300x217.jpg\")
<\/p>\n