Yeah. Yeah. I know.
I forgot a letter in that third word. Let's just call it a vowel movement.
The hole in question now resides in the front of one of my favorite cotton shirts. And, in that, lies a tale. Not much of one, though.
In August of 2013, I was in Miami for two weeks. Amongst other purchases, I bought a Sony camera and some clothes.
The clothes purchase was every bit as important as the new camera. Finding quality shirts in my size in Mexico has turned out to be something of a problem. And that has surprised me. My Mexican neighbors seem to find appropriate shirts for daily wear.
And I am not very fussy with what I choose to wear. Anyone who has ever met me will affidavit that assertion.
All I need are cotton shirts that button up the front and are light enough to wear in the beach heat. A rather simple list of requirements.
Almost all of the shirts in the local stores are either polyester or a poly-cotton mix -- and too thick for comfort.
I thought Miami would offer plenty of stores with light cotton shirts. There were some. But not many.
My friend Nancy, Roy's wife, found a Perry Ellis short-sleeve plaid shirt at Neiman Marcus -- I think. I complemented it with another plaid shirt from a fishing store. With my two acquisitions, I was on my way back to Mexico.
The fishing shirt is still doing yeoman duty. But the Perry Ellis is about to sleep with the fishes. And that is too bad. It served me well through two summers here.
Unfortunately, its light weight is what did it in. A couple of months ago, I noticed the cloth was getting thin around the arm holes. My friend Wynn patched and re-enforced it.
Then, yesterday morning, while buttoning it, I stuck a finger right through the cloth. You can see why. As Gertrude Stein might have said (and did): "There is no there there." The cloth is somewhere between translucent and transparent.
I know the reason. My laundress is rather rough on my clothes. Of course, getting one wear out of a shirt before it needs laundering does tend to shorten its life. I suspect the dead shirt was washed in excess of 100 times.
So, on my trip through China, Korea (the free one), Japan, and Russia, I will keep my eyes open for a replacement. Too bad Hong Kong is not on the docket. I could easily resurrect the shirt in several copies.
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This is really a separate topic, but I wanted to share it with you.
While floating in the pool continuing my slog through Jorge Castañeda's Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War, I heard some commotion from the communication tower in the lot next door.
This is what I saw. Well, it is what I saw through the viewfinder of my camera.
Four workers performing maintenance on the Eiffel Tower. In this case, it appears they are adjusting one of the cellular antennas.
Because this type of work fascinates me, they provided me with a full afternoon of entertainment -- whenever my mind wandered from Castañeda's prose. (Don't get me wrong. The book is valuable, in that Castañeda provides a robust framework for analyzing the Latin American left in the 1990s. It is just a bit turgid.)
I mention the camera only to note the guys are zoomed in to let you see them. This is actually the view from the pool.
I so want to climb up there.
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