Ode to Corduroy

Let me wear corduroy garments

or let me stride naked in public

or incarcerate me in Dockers.

Pants, blazers, shirts, cutoffs, coats

with no more than 6-wail,

NEVER PLEATED PANTS!

Oh the glorious loose, comfortable nature

of this cozy clothing!

Let us remember the halcyon days of corduroy,

the baby blue three-piece suit

with wide lapels, flared pants,

advertised in Playboy,

long, long gone

like gelatin desserts with suspended shrimp,

topped with Cool Whip

or serve and volley on grass at Wimbledon.

Praise be to my greatest corduroy garment,

a tan car coat with suede pockets, flannel lining, leather buttons,

stitched by communist women in Yugoslavia during the Cold War,

while singing proletariat hymns,

purchased 15 years ago,

by a student at a thrift store for 99 cents.

She claimed the coat was “pure Mr. Love.”

From the moment I slipped it on, I agreed.

I’ve probably walked 5000 miles along Oregon’s ocean beaches in this coat.

I’d received compliments all over Oregon from old and young alike (mostly homeless people).

I will never forget wearing it in a Newport wine shop and a beautiful woman

wearing an eye patch,

wielding a cane,

came up,

rested her left hand on my shoulder,

looked the coat up and down,

looked me in the eyes and said,

“You and that jacket really have it going on.”

Any woman doing yard work with me wearing corduroy cutoffs

won’t be doing yard work for very long.

Hail to Jimmy Carter,

the only President to ever wear corduroy!

Look where we went after Reagan’s pinstripes.

My father, a Church of Christ minister,

used to preach in a green corduroy blazer with patches.

It should have made me believe

because Jesus would have worn corduroy,

he had a corduroy personality,

unlike Peter and Paul.

Oh those B Westerns where the good guys wore corduroy jackets with fringes!

The bad guys work buckskin,

scraped hides from dead animals,

and there your have it why the good guys always won.

Rock on forever Three Dog Night

performing concerts wearing corduroy.

Thank you Lauren Hutton for the gap in your teeth

and wearing a mauve corduroy pant suit.

I must be the last golfer on Earth who plays rounds in corduroys!

All my corduroys have grass stains in the knees,

thus precisely demonstrating a superb way to live,

gritty, going to the ground.

You don’t see grass stains in yoga pants.

If I ever marry again,

I will wear a corduroy blazer,

the color of burgundy.

The holy grail was always white corduroy pants.

One time I saw the treasure,

so big they would have hung loose on Chester Arthur!

I once wrote a utopian short story

where every citizens of a kingdom wore corduroy.

The nemesis of this kingdom made their slaves wear fleece and lycra.

One morning I decided it was time to euthanize the car coat.

It was fraying, ripped, spent.

I hung it on a driftwood fort

knowing the tide would wash it away

and a mermaid would transform it into a bikini.

I left the beach,

sprinted back an hour later,

rescued the coat,

and a master seamstress brought forth resurrection.

Corduroy is all but extirpated in Oregon Coast thrift stores,

soon all of Oregon, the nation.

Then extinction.

I’m down to three pairs of pants,

threadbare wine, brown, green.

I keep searching in vain,

but search nonetheless.

I will never buy them online!

Have you seen the awful styles?

Zero percent cotton!

One-hundred percent petroleum product.

Corduroy blazers are all that remain of the corduroy empire.

I inspect them on racks every now and then,

thinking I might save yet another refugee from recycling,

becoming composite material for playground surfaces

because kids can’t handle falling on bark dust anymore.

I continue to haunt garage and estate sales,

hoping, praying, conjuring

some old coot croaked

from smoking too many Camels.

He left behind a closet

stuffed with nothing but corduroy,

that when I behold,

I will fall to my knees

and weep tears of joy

with a 2-wail stream.