One good dead man's socks - thriftstore bonanza !
Jan 29 '03
The Bottom Line Socks are too darned expensive. Just wait until someone chucks out his uncle's sock drawer at Goodwill. You'll never darn a sock again.
Socks ain't as cheap as they used to be, now ain't that the truth! So it's time to tighten our belts, patch up old underwear and darn our socks.
This here Yank don't like doing that much, so here's my solution: I just buy ALL of one dead man's socks at a thriftstore, since that's the quantity that usually arrives in a heap there. You see a basket filled to the brim, and you'll know someone died recently. So check it out - new good quality men's socks can cost $5-$10 at Macy's or Nordstroms, but go for 25c-50c at Goodwill.
At these prices, you can afford to splurge. You can have 100 pairs to choose from every morning, all colors and materials, to match all your pants. If they get holey, just toss 'em. They're dirtcheap, and a lot more keep on coming as people move on down the line. Don't fit right? Stretched out, shrunk? Toss 'em.
Better yet, donate 'em back. Someone like you needs them.
In 1982, in a quaint winter youth hostel in Grindelwald, Switzerland, I saw a Finnish girl sitting, red hair all aglow by the fire, darning a woolen sock. She was intensely biting her lip as she fought that fuzzy monster. The whole room of chatting, Scrabble-playing hostelers kept their eyes on her struggle, as one would watch a spider spin his web. It was fascinating that a person could have such a struggle just over a holey heel.
I sat beside her, ostensibly to get closer to the fire. I dared to ask, "What are you doing?" Best to feign interest to get things going, I reasoned.
She looked at me, astonished. "I'm fixing my socks. Everybody does that."
I looked at her and said, "Not in America, we don't. I've never seen anyone do that before in my whole life."
With that, we became friends. WE travelled the next eight months together all over Europe, we went to Russia, CHina, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel and Turkey together. She came to live here in San Francisco with me. She met all my friends and made them her own.
And everywhere we ever went, she'd darn her socks at night. While Germans knitted sweaters, she'd darn away.
The moral of this story:
Socks can bring you new friends? Hmm, maybe.
Americans don't darn socks. They go to thrift stores.
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frwhiskey
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Location: San Francisco,CA
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Curmudgeonly yet whimsical, I'm a San Francisco tourguide full of vim and vinegar.
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