If you knew my father at work from the early 70’s onward, you knew him dressed like this…hickory stripe overalls, and most often a white t-shirt underneath. It changed up on occasion, in the winter perhaps a grey sweatshirt underneath or a fleece-lined flannel shirt over it, but always the overalls.
I’m not sure how married he was to the brand, my mother doesn’t remember either and surely she did all the buying, usually every other year or so saw a new set and the old one going either into the “rag bag” (didn’t every house have this back then? Old clothes made into dust rags or to be used in patches for other clothes?) or donated to charity. The set I hung onto was from JC Penney, the “Big Mac” brand. Searching online they’re “vintage” now, and can be gotten for over $100.
When he retired, he kept a set for the inevitable jobs around the house and threw the other set in the bag to go to “Goodwill” - Goodwill, of course, being the Coca-Cola of clothing donation. Being Long Island, I’m sure it was the St, Vincent de Paul Society. Happily I found them in the bag before they went out. They’ve moved with me over a dozen times in the intervening years, miraculously surviving mostly intact…I lost the nail apron along the way, sadly. My mother said she always washed the overalls without it, because it took forever to dry.
We weren’t on very good terms at that time, and it being fairly soon after my sister died by her own hand our now 3-person family was in a fair bit of turmoil. We were always tense, my parents and I, for reasons it would take me decades to figure out. In the year following Amy’s suicide, I had left a not so great relationship, moved several times and started a new pretty great relationship. They had followed the advice most every book and pamphlet on recovery after a loss such as that had to offer - don’t do a thing for at least a year. Don’t move, quit your job, buy anything major…no big life changes.
They waited a year and then…did all of the above. Sold their house of 25ish years and bought a house on a lake in Connecticut. They both retired. Left the house in which my sister and I grew up and all its memories behind, pulled a “geographic” and tried to start a new life in a different state.
When I grabbed the overalls out of the garbage bag or the box they were in, the book wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye, nor was I particularly interested in being friends with my father…he had been so angry and nasty for so long that I just felt like it was permanent; even if it wasn’t, I’d have to do a lot of forgiving to get there anyway.
It’s 2025 and 25 years after that period. My father’s been dead for almost a quarter of it. The time of his dying was long and arduous and slow. He had Congestive Heart Failure and as usual there were surgeries and treatments and lots of procedures, and he slowly faded into his chair while gasping the refrain of his last few years: “I never thought it would be this way.” We found a way to make peace, and then found a way to grow close. There were still flashes of the old Eddie, and I steered well clear of those, but mostly he was the friendly guy his friends knew as “Ward,” after Ward Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver.
Today, his overalls hang in my makeshift photo studio. They’ve haunted me for a while, mostly because I’d decided the book was “locked” and I was done shooting. I’ve since made two exceptions, one when I found all his and my grandfather’s IDs and old union cards, and now for the overalls. How could I not include them? If anything about my father was iconic, this was it…most other stagehands of the time wore t-shirts and jeans. Whenever anyone asks about him, they come up at some point in the conversation 100% of the time.
I’ve been feeling stuck with respect to the book for some time. The global pandemic that allowed me all the time to shoot everything and put it all together was also responsible for the disruptions that kept me from feeling financially secure enough to print it myself, and working to transform my career has robbed me of the drive to make the effort. On top of all that the thought of hanging the overalls and shooting them just felt huge, like the effort would be overwhelming.
But once I got them out, set up the stand from which to hang them, the old overalls unfurled and settled right into his old shape, his stance…he always favored one leg because of a bad knee in the other, so he often stood with one knee bent and the opposite hip out a bit, the weight shifted to take off the stress. First the knee was bad, then it was replaced, then the replacement aged out decades later, ultimately mostly keeping him in his chair.
It’s complicated to sit down there and look at them…sad and proud and admiring and a little lonely. I miss him, even while missing him surprises me.
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