CARLTON FLETCHER: Mourning the loss of my yellow corduroy bellbottoms

“Fashion, turn to the left; Fashion, turn to the right; Ooh fashion.”

— David Bowie

My wife pointed out the other day that the hole that had worn in the leg of my jeans was “very fashionable these days.”

I laughed.

I’m about as fashionable as a raccoon-skin cap tied to the aerial of a Nash Rambler (if you’re under 40, you can Google that or ask your parents). But Tara’s comment did start me to thinking about how our perspectives change from generation to generation.

Back at Irwin County High School, circa 1974, I saved up my money and bought myself a pair of bright yellow corduroy bellbottom pants. (Don’t laugh, they were cool, especially when I wore my 3-inch-high stacked heels with them.) That’s the only time I can remember in my life buying something for myself that I thought was fashionable and with the times. (Since then, I just get jeans, period.)

Those yellow corduroy bellbottoms were a hit at school and everywhere else I wore them, and I never put them on without feeling like the coolest guy in Irwin County (and that was not really bragging, so don’t hold it against me).

In the winter of ‘74, we got one of those rare snows in Irwin County where the white stuff actually stuck to the ground. A bunch of us went over to Ronnie and Donnie Jones’s house to spend the night, and of course we spent the afternoon throwing snowballs at each other. When it got dark, though, we came up with a different game plan.

We patted out an arsenal of snowballs and stacked them up in a strategic location in the ditch that ran alongside the highway where the Jones twins’ house was located. We waited — ducking low in the ditch — for cars to come by, and when they did, we’d pop up and throw snowballs at each vehicle.

We thought that was a pretty much hoot until we unleashed a barrage of snowballs at one car, and the brake lights came on seconds after our ammunition landed. Everyone that we bombarded hit their brakes, but this car’s driver didn’t just hit the brakes. He threw his car into reverse and started backing up on the slick road like a madman. Of course, we ran like hell.

The Joneses had some vegetables planted in their backyard (where we ran), and around one little patch was some barbed-wired fencing. I ran into the fence and tore a significant hole in my yellow corduroy bellbottoms. Man, I was distraught. Because in those days, you did not wear holey jeans in public.

My mom sewed a patch over the hole (I believe the patch said “War is not healthy for people and other living things” … rebel that I was), but somehow the magic was gone from my yellow corduroy bellbottoms. People stopped talking about how cool they were and started asking about what the stupid patch meant. Even the 3-inch heels didn’t help. Not much later, I just quit wearing them.

I thought about those pants as I contemplated the hole I’d worn in one of my favorite pairs of jeans. And I was momentarily amazed by the fact that, not only do kids pay extra now to get jeans with holes in them, they somehow consider this alteration high fashion.

Oh, and even though it’s now cool to wear jeans with holes in them, I do not consider myself fashionable just because yard work and numerous subsequent washings wore away the material in a pair of my pants, leaving them holey, and thus, more stylish. I just laugh at the silliness that some of us put ourselves through in the name of fashion. And, of course, I mourn the loss of those bright yellow corduroy bellbottoms. Now that, boys and girls, was fashion.