By the way, I don't own the stuff in found on the page links.  I'm just here to point you toward it.  Hopefully, if you are looking, you will find what you want.  eBay has become the place to find that stuff now that it is popular again.  Click on any of the items or use the handy search box on the right if you want to look for something.

OK.  So I was looking back over my bookmarks and the first thing I did was realize that I really need to take better advantage of the folder system.  It seems that I'm a virtual slob (that isn't me in the photo though).  My wife would probably have a comment to add here, but she never reads what I put online.  I want to share some of the stuff I find amusing and I hope you'll find that your visit wasn't too much of a waste of time.

Do you remember Tuffskins?  They were the heavy duty "jeans" sold by Sears.  Every year, as summer vacation drew to a close, you would see herds of small, elementary aged boys being led to the local Sears fitting rooms.  Once there, all of the mothers would go about the ritual of shaming their sons by forcing them into dark green Tuffskins and then shouting for all to hear that they seem a little loose in the crotch.  Or, worse yet, they would announce that they were going to grab some "huskies" for them to try on.  The horror.  I was a husky.  Husky was Sears' way of avoiding the placement of a "Fat Kid" tag on the back pocket.  Oh...it still makes me cringe.  After the "husky" memory, what I remember most is the funky colors and reinforced knees.  They always felt like cardboard.  It didn't matter if you washed them 100 times, they still sprang back into their original shape.  Sadly, Tuffskins are one of the first "vintage" items I've been unable to locate on eBay.  I think they deserve to be in a museum somewhere if nothing else.

I managed to wear holes through my Tuffskins enough times that my Mom relented and bought me more traditional Levis and Lee jeans, but I seem to remember that they were the kind that turned your legs and underwear blue until they were washed several times.  They were also BELL BOTTOMS!  For those who might not know, bell bottom jeans were specially designed to find their way past the chainguard on banana seat bikes.  It happened to me on more than one occasion.  They looked something like these:

[nms:bell bottom jeans,3]

You can see more of these using the eBay search box on the right, but I don't want to fill this blog with rss feeds from eBay.

I actually remember my Mother telling me to tuck my jeans into my tube socks with the colored stripes at the top to avoid the embarrassment of getting trapped in the chain.  I never thought of it at the time, but that must have looked pretty darn amusing all by itself.  No wonder I didn't have a girlfriend until high school.