The Pea Coat

He had purchased the pea coat at Canal Jeans on lower Broadway in the area called SoHo, south of Houston. The cross-street is not to be pronounced Hewston, as in the Texan city, but articulated as Howston. The Texas City is named after Sam Houston, a Texas general and statesman, but the New York City street is named after William Houstoun, who, according to Wikipedia, served as a delegate from Georgia to the Continental Congress from 1784-1786 and then to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  Houstoun then married Mary Bayard in 1788 and Mary’s father, Nicholas, named the street after his new son-in-law. In the early 1970s SoHo was an area occupied by factories catering to the clothing trade and possessing for reasons he never explored but certainly welcomed into his life, a countercultural vibe. He worked rather dejectedly in one of the many clothing manufacturing factories, but he took his lunch in the newly opened artist run hippie restaurant FOOD. Every day he alone joined the crowd who frequented FOOD and ordered a bowl of soup, two slices of Anadama Bread and three slabs of butter. He had not before heard of this bread nor tasted anything so delicious. In his home Wonder Bread had been the only dough.
            On the east side of Broadway about two blocks from Houston Street sat Canal Jeans. It was, in his memory, a cavernous establishment filled with rough-hewn, large tables piled high with jeans and shirts. In earlier and casual visits to the concern he had purchased several pairs of painter jeans in a variety of bold colors: sun-yellow, sky blue, summer green. The walls were lined with shirts and coats, some that had even been previously worn. The idea of second-hand clothes was a novelty and certainly not something of which his mother would approve, though he recalled that once in college he had exchanged with a friend a perfectly fine sweater for one with a tear in the elbow. 
            Along the walls of Canal Jeans is where he found the pea coat. It was not a traditional Navy-issued garment. That style could probably have been purchased at the Army-Navy store around the corner, and, in fact, he didn’t even know that he was looking for this item or even that he had need of one. The coat was longer than that worn by navy seaman; it hung somewhere between his knees and waist. He pulled it from its place on the rack and put it on. He looked at himself in the mirror, and without another thought purchased the coat. He recognized in the mirror who he thought he was and wanted to be. He loved the way he felt in that garment, like a second skin he felt hugged by coat. And for several years he wore that coat until one day he didn’t. At then some point he lost contact with that garment and even perhaps with a version of himself. I think that for the rest of his life he has looked about for that coat. 
            Thoreau cautioned us to beware the enterprise that requires new clothes and not a new man to wear those clothes. No, clothes do not make the man, but clothes do fit the man. There are clothes that are the external expression of the self. Yes, of course, the self does change, and it must dress itself into the world. I think that when one shops for clothes there are at least two options: to purchase the clothes that when worn will impress the world with the image, and then there are the garments that when acquired clothe s the self exactly as it would be expressed. Though he has purchased a great many covers, he thinks that he has only rarely found that pea coat or eaten lunches at FOOD.