Work Pants Destroyers

 

My collection of destroyed work clothes

We had a snow day on Monday, which was much needed because David and I very badly needed a work pants repair day. Climbing up to clean the chimney last week, I had torn open the inseam of my best insulated jeans. After six days of enjoying the breeze, I saw a forecast of -20 and knew that repair day had come soon. David, my best friend, coworker and resident of the tiny cabin below my house, was also sporting some risque cuts in his Carharts, so we settled in at the sewing machine. Sewing is not one of my better skills, but thankfully David is a master seamster. He did a majority of the work while I pulled stitching on a dozen different seams and cut patches for ten different pairs of Wranglers and Carhart work pants. 

David and I destroy pants for a living. The IRS classifies us as construction workers, but we spend most of our time tearing holes in double stitched, heavy duty work pants and jackets. The beefy sewing machine that doubles as David’s kitchen table hums as I sit on the antique woodstove with the seam ripper in my hand. I am distracted by the hundreds of projects I can see out the window. There is a pile of reclaimed lumber to de-nail that stands taller than me. Try as I might to avoid rusty metal, one or two of the five thousand nails in that pile will inevitably gash my jeans at some point. 

Beside the pile of old boards is a large pile of rocks, each about fist to skull sized. I collect them by the truckload from the mountain sides and haul them down a few hundred at a time where we stack them into walls and garden landscaping. Though generally rounded, these rocks wear out the knees of quilted Carharts like sandpaper. 

On the other side of the woodpile, David’s 91 Ford Explorer sits up on blocks with its hood up. Last Thursday, after years of leakage, he got on a wild hair to replace all the gaskets in the engine. Never mind that we do not have an enclosed garage and it is an exceptionally cold and snowy February. The inner guts of an old V6 are stacked haphazardly around the inside of the woodshed among bottles of cleaning goop and scrub brushes. As I am allergic to most things auto-mechanical, for my health and sanity, I tried to stay far away from this engine project. But, after dumping a large box of Torx Screws in the driveway, I needed my large rolling magnet which lives in the shed. As I wandered through the detritus of engine parts, I took a peek inside the open carcass of the engine. As I did so, two new tears magically appeared in the side of my jeans. I sighed because this just happens. 

A man builds a strong relationship with a good pair of work clothes. It takes commitment to break in a brand new pair of jeans. They take weeks of stiff legged hobbling before they start to conform to your legs. But once they do, there is no piece of clothing more comfortable. I often wear the same pair of work pants every single day for four or five months straight. The typical standard that David and I live by is to wash the pants only when they are able to stand upright without legs inside of them. Even then, washing only weakens the smell of sawdust and diesel enough to trick the nose into thinking it might just be a working man’s perfume. 

Inevitably in a man’s life he has to deal with a few things. Someday, his trusty dog is going to die. Someday his reliable truck will be unrepairable. Someday his hands will stop working correctly no matter how much Working Hands lotion he puts on. And someday his favorite pair of work pants will disintegrate. He may snag a stray nail or a sharp stick and the cotton fibers will simply give up the ghost. The frayed edges will unravel and the entire pair of pants will drift off like dust in the wind as the infamous Kansas song wafts through the ether. Thankfully, that day is not today. Today is work pants repair day.