You Can’t Believe Daniel Boone

The other day I saw a woman crossing the parking lot with her recent purchase of a six pack of beer. A few things were obvious about this woman. She wasn’t a very serious drinker or if she was she had fallen on hard times and would have to make her six pack last. She had more years behind her than she had in front of her and those behind years were none too kind to her. She had a horrible sense of style. This is coming from someone with no sense of style. She was wearing pink flip-flops, faded leg tattoos, far too short shorts; a low cut t-shirt and a faded brown leather jacket with fringe down each sleeve.

 

I see people like this all day, every day and rarely do I even pay any attention to them. I don’t care what people wear as a general rule because they just might start to look at me with a critical eye to my wardrobe. I sure don’t want to be the subject of some overly critical blogger. However, this woman was wearing a fringe jacket!

I have always liked the look of fringe on clothing, the way it mimics every arm or body movement. When I was a teenager, fringe was very big fashion accessory for anyone purporting to be a hippie. It was a big deal for wanna be hippies like me, but I just couldn’t afford a leather fringed jacket. I couldn’t even afford a shirt with fringe, although to tell the truth they even looked stupid to me back then.

 

I did have pair of cut off jean shorts that I allowed to developed long and almost cool fringe. Well, until one wash day that mom decided to put a hem on my shorts. I couldn’t look cool with hemmed shorts! Mom must have had a hard time containing her laughter as I ranted about my ex-fringed shorts. I made her promise that the next pair of jeans she cut off for me (next year) she wouldn’t hem when they became ratty looking. By the next year there were more pressing issues to worry about than frayed shorts, with my brother leaving home and that pesky grade ten report card of mine. We weren’t allowed to wear shorts in summer school.

Earlier in my life I was a big fan of Daniel Boone who as we all know wore a fringed deer skin jacket while he was cavorting about the Kentucky backwoods “killin’ bars”. I found out that the original reason to wear fringe was not for style but to direct the rain away from your body. It seems that rain would run off of the jacket and down the fringe, dripping harmlessly on the ground. The fringe would act like a series of wicks allowing the clothing to dry quickly.

 

You know, I have believed this for years, but just now after writing it down I am going to call bullshit. Leather doesn’t dry quickly and no amount of fringe is going to speed it up. Those pioneers and mountain men would have been better off wearing cotton or wool.

It’s a fine state of affairs when you can’t believe Daniel Boone.