Goodwill Trip

I decided to go to Goodwill today. I like to give little bouquets of flowers and I was out of vases that I could give away. Goodwill was just the ticket. Although, on a side note, I paid upwards of $1.50 for one of them - that's expensive! haha

So...I walked in and noticed that blue tags were 1/2 off today. With that in mind, I went over to the men's blazers. Jim always comments about photos in fashion magazines of men wearing a nice blazer with jeans. He really likes that look. Just recently, he bought a couple of cardigans which look really nice.

It was hard for me to find the size in the blazers, so I waited for Mom and Dad to arrive (they were stopping in on their way home from Big Lots - we are a budget-conscious family) and moved on to the men's shirts. There were a lot of shirt that were very nice. I can never remember what size Jim wears, and know that the boys won't like shirts like that, so I skipped those in lieu of the more casual shirts. I found a Hollister long-sleeved shirt (which Jack has already grabbed out of Chase's hands and declared that he is going to wear it tomorrow), a tan/brown long sleeve, and a blue striped sweater for the boys (the sweater still had the tags on it!). I found a pair of khaki pants for Strat, and I found three pants and a shirt for myself.

However, it was JIM who had the luck! I found several blazers that I wanted my dad to size for me. He worked at Bill's Men's Store in his youth for years and years, honing a love and appreciation for men's clothing. Watching him try on these items and size them was like watching a poet working on his latest ode. Dad would button the jacket, tug on it a bit, run his fingers along the hem of the jacket then up to the bottom of the sleeve, back to the hem, back up the bottom of the sleeve.

"This blazer is a 42 regular." "This one is a 40 long." I finally laughed and told him he was like a circus show! It was fabulous.

I would take a blazer out and show Dad. "No, too dated," he would comment. "There's a hole in the back," as if some super-sensitive tracking beam had located the tiniest of thread separations in a hidden area. "The lapels are too wide." He ticked down my list of possibilities faster than an auctioneer goes from $5 to $100. He noticed that one of my picks was missing buttons, so he moved to other jackets with those same buttons and borrowed them. I laughed and told mother that he was defacing other poor jackets, to which she rolled her eyes and stated, "That's between him and the Lord."

Then he started looking for options. He spied a Hickey-Freeman jacket and ran his hands over the sleeve like I imagine he did at one time with my mother (haha). I gathered that he had looked at this item on a past Goodwill trip, knowing that it was a touch too large for him. However, it would probably fit Jim.

My Goodwill trip was nearing an end, setting a record of $75. EGAD! However, I had 4 blazers, two fuzzy Gap shirts for Jim, and the aforementioned items for the rest of us.

I was not as impressed as I felt I should be over the hallowed Hickey-Freeman, and did a little research on the brand when I returned home. WOW! This is a company from Rochester, NY who absolutely refuses to outsource, holds to the same quality standards as when they opened around the turn of the century, and suits start at $1,200. Wow! My blazer find was $10 (it didn't have the coveted blue tag).

This Goodwill thing is pretty good.