~ The Red Raiders ~
Clothing, we choose to wear for both adornment and hopefully comfort. The female of our species being most adept at it, presenting herself in so many practiced ways her refinement to be seen, and nearly all the world delights in her varied appearances in stages of dress and undress.
The male on the other hand, unlike the natural world where the male of the kind is highly enhanced, goes about in a relatively mundane manner wearing relatively little color or engaging appearance. And while the ladies look fetching in all their various clothing, from their dainties to their elegant gowns, it is of no interest to many how the male looks in his underwear. Despite expensive ads to promote this failure, a man's shorts remain steadfast in their lack of personality.
There was however, one hysterical appearance of underwear worn my men that left their mark ingrained in his memory. They were not comfortable. Although when worn for the first time the flannel did seem to caress the skin favorably. But only for a short time. In two or three washings they changed not only their own persona, but that of the hapless wearer as well. By now, every man reading this over fifty, will know of what is being alluded to here. Indeed, it is the incomparable long underwear he was necessitated to don somewhere before the first freeze. It's true! Every boy, every man was required to wear these things from December to March, was cursed and sentenced to months of pulling at himself to free his body from pinches, migrating cloth, choking, twists, creeping legs, binding cuffs and piercing buttons. And the worst of it all, someone was obsessed at one point with dying them red!
So then, they not only tormented the everlasting aspirations out of the wearer, they made him look like some part of a circus should he remove his shirt in late season. These long johns, or long handled underwear as they came to disreputably be called, were worn to aid in keeping us warmer. But they were more successful in creating a bizarre sort of dance as men in every occupation pulled and gestured throughout the day in an effort to keep them under control. The school boy sitting at his desk pulled and tugged at the same part of his anatomy as did the Wall Street broker. They were difficult to manipulate in stressful situations calling for haste of disrobing and often embarrassing when one side or other of the slit insisted on snapping into the realm of very personal property.
So ~ considering the foregoing for a time, one would conclude that no one with one eye and half sense would invest in another pair of these abominable red afflictions. Not so, dear hearts! Our good friend White Horse, has spent a week's wages on the purchase of a bright new pair of these. Could it be that he has a certain perverted penchant for being prodded, poked, and squeezed unnaturally by this devils uniform? Surely this is not true? Let us all give our friend and fellow Muleskinner benefit of the doubt and say he bought them for their color.
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