Overalls
Blue denim overalls with copper buttons that said Payday on them. These were what our dad wore each day to his job at the Santa Fe rail yards. Every day he came home from work at 10 minutes til 4. He changed and left his work clothes in the laundry room before he entered the kitchen where he would make himself a scalding hot cup of instant coffee with a spoonful of sugar winter or summer. And maybe peanut butter on white bread or saltine crackers.
I remember the smell of hot, train car grease on those overalls.
I remember on laundry day when those pockets were emptied a litter of the days remnants appeared. Sticks of gum, Black Jack, Clove or Juicyfruit gum. Loose change mixed with pocket lint. Odd hardware bits, matches and Rolaids.
Later when I was a teen, because I liked doing nice things for the man, I would sit at the sewing machine and repair rips and tears and burn holes from hot weld spatters. He claimed he never liked his job fabricating fixes on train cars, but I think he took some satisfaction in it and I liked to think of his funky handiwork on trains that traveled the U. S.
SA. 4.24.2020
Here is our Dad in a scrap of fabric. Lewis Allison wore these overalls on the job at the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad. This swatch is a set of side pockets for sliding long tools into like a screwdriver or a ruler. The metal buttons say Wards, but he bought his work clothes at Sears. Probably they were not his, but his in spirit.
Everyday at ten minutes to four in the afternoon he would roar up the street in his truck. Lewis and his lunch box with its creaky handle would come through the back door and sit down at the kitchen table with a hot cup of instant black coffee. Spring, fall, winter and scorching summer, always the same routine.
Lewis worked long and hard for the railroad since he was just out of high school. He hated every moment of it. During his later years at the Santa Fe he was a welder. The flying sparks from that fiery work burned holes into his denims. I remember him asking Mom in exasperated tones if she had fixed his pants yet. She would say that she was going to get to it, until finally he exploded with the question, “just what do you DO all day?” Yeah, I wondered. What DID she do all day? We went to school. He went to work …. And mom, well, we never did find out. It wasn’t fixing dad’s pants, because he went directly to the sewing machine, and began repairing them himself.
He was handy that way. Or as she said, “he could do anything.”
So mom didn’t have to.
LA 2.23.20
Note: This one is interesting because the memories are so close… I like the way that you have added details that I have forgotten.One thing missing from the pockets…. Root beer barrels. Remember those?
SA. 4.24.2020
Here is our Dad in a scrap of fabric. Lewis Allison wore these overalls on the job at the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad. This swatch is a set of side pockets for sliding long tools into like a screwdriver or a ruler. The metal buttons say Wards, but he bought his work clothes at Sears. Probably they were not his, but his in spirit.
Everyday at ten minutes to four in the afternoon he would roar up the street in his truck. Lewis and his lunch box with its creaky handle would come through the back door and sit down at the kitchen table with a hot cup of instant black coffee. Spring, fall, winter and scorching summer, always the same routine.
Lewis worked long and hard for the railroad since he was just out of high school. He hated every moment of it. During his later years at the Santa Fe he was a welder. The flying sparks from that fiery work burned holes into his denims. I remember him asking Mom in exasperated tones if she had fixed his pants yet. She would say that she was going to get to it, until finally he exploded with the question, “just what do you DO all day?” Yeah, I wondered. What DID she do all day? We went to school. He went to work …. And mom, well, we never did find out. It wasn’t fixing dad’s pants, because he went directly to the sewing machine, and began repairing them himself.
He was handy that way. Or as she said, “he could do anything.”
So mom didn’t have to.
LA 2.23.20
Note: This one is interesting because the memories are so close… I like the way that you have added details that I have forgotten.One thing missing from the pockets…. Root beer barrels. Remember those?
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