Work Clothes

The pile of clothes sits on the floor at the foot of my bed. They have been neatly stacked there for two weeks. I look at them each day, but have not stooped down to pick them up. Sometimes I give them a nod, the way we do here in the South when we pass someone we know only casually, a silent acknowledgement of respect.

These same clothes were previously on the floor in the closet, next to my work boots. They were relegated there by the Redhead, who considered them not good enough to cohabitate with my other clothes. It was a forced segregation, the white trash kept down at floor level while the more cultured and fortunate apparel lived higher up on their hangers with more room to breathe. It was an arrangement not unheard of in these parts. "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", as one Alabamian put it back in 1963. The Redhead adopted this philosophy with my clothing, and it seemed to work well enough in the confines of a shared closet with limited space.

This pile is the collection of my "woods clothes." These are the clothes I have worn day in and day out for the last couple of years. They consist of jeans and canvas pants, t-shirts and Polo's, and they tell a story. It is a story recorded in stains and smells, most which are so ingrained in the fabric that their collective tales cannot be removed by repeated washing.

There are blood stains, type O positive. This is my blood, shed for you, courtesy of barbed wire, green brier, and blackberry vine. Thickets and cane break bottoms where timber resides. Roads that had to be crossed to see what was on the other side.

There are the smells: sweat, diesel, oil, gasoline and turpentine. The liquid fuels that almost invisibly transport food and fiber to homes. Your toilet paper does not magically appear at Walmart, nor does your lumber at Home Depot. Your flooring and furniture did not materialize on a showroom floor. These are only stops along the arduous journey from stump to consumer.

These clothes of mine will no longer be worn every day. I have taken a new job in forestry, one that will be less sweat and more thought. I will be assisting a fine team of men and women in promoting forestry in Alabama through the Alabama Forestry Association. It will be a job that requires less woods time and more face time. More meeting, speaking, and writing and less solitude. It will present a new set of challenges, but will also result in a different set of rewards. There will still be pressures, but pressures of a different sort.

The clothes have been singled out for disposal. The Redhead has made a silent declaration that my woods days are over.

But I believe I may hang onto them for a while--maybe box them up and put them in the attic--out of sight, out of her mind, so to speak.

I have never been the sort of man to give up on a garment just because it has a little age and wear and tear on it. Besides, the call of the woods is a Siren song, and you just never know when you may head back out.