Wearing Baggy Pants

Bagging pants that sag below a person’s waistline and sometimes even beneath his butt cheeks weren’t brought into vogue by prisoners and wanna-be thugs of recent years. That really occurred quite a few years ago. Let me share a few examples. While visiting my grandparents Ray and Becky Miner’s house, my father Carl Beck just happened to walk by the bottom of the staircase as Gram was walking upstairs. Ceilings in the old farmhouse were twelve feet high and the stairway was long and lined by a dark oak banister. Gram’s arthritic knees and feet made the progress upstairs slow, holding tightly to the banister. Dad paused as he saw something unusual. Apparently Gram had forgotten to raise her underwear from half mast while using the bathroom and part of the garment was visible dangling out from under the hem of her house dress.

I’m not sure whether Dad was actually being gentlemanly or whether he was too embarrassed and afraid to say something to Gram, but he found my mom Sybil Miner Beck and advised her of Gram’s problem. Mom went upstairs to help correct the problem.

My sister Kathy picked up the nickname Droopy Drawers. Mom took a photo of her wearing only her cotton underwear as she rummaged through the lower dresser drawer where Mom kept her purses. The underwear weren’t really baggy, but they looked as though they drooped in the seat.

Another memory of baggy underwear I have, I know I’ve shared before. When my wife Cindy and I were first married, we had to count our pennies and make each dollar count. One day she walked past me as I sat in the living room and the underwear she was wearing had the elastic separating from the panty’s cotton material. It gave those panties the lopsided appearance of a person who’s had a stroke, where the one side of the person’s face droops down. I said, “Surely we have enough money to buy some more underwear.

She replied, “I can still wear them. They’re good enough for everyday.”

As she strolled by me the next time, I snatched them, separating the elastic and panties even more and I said, “Now they’re not.” I knew that Cindy hated to repair clothing and this was beyond using her usual bevy of safety pins.

She stopped, turned and said, “You tore them, now you’ll have to buy me new ones.” And I did. Every year for Christmas, Cindy was assured of one gift…new underwear.