November 30, 2021: Falling Apart -

My folks had a 1966 Mustang that they gave me when I graduated college in 1977. It was falling apart when I got it. I don’t know why. That’s a swift decline, but maybe it just wasn’t built to last, or maybe the folks were car torturers, and it was, as our Central Oregon friends say, “rode hard and put up wet.” This seems unlikely, but I’ve had cars since that were in much better shape at age eleven.

The Mustang had an owner’s manual in the glove box which we consulted frequently (see falling apart), and I was particularly tickled by the pages saying why you did not need to lubricate some joint: because the Mustang was New-Fangled, and the joint now had SEALS around it, unlike on older models. So it ordinarily didn’t need lubricating, and you should Leave It Alone, not break those fancy modern seals!

The charm was the boldface blue instruction: LET YOUR CAR TELL YOU WHEN IT NEEDS SERVICE!

We got a lot of mileage, so to speak, out of LET YOUR CAR TELL YOU. We didn't have excess funds with which to fix it up, so parts would fail, or fall off, or it would make a ghastly grinding noise, and we’d say, “I think the car is telling us it needs service.”  The trick was to make this observation in as deadpan a delivery as possible.

(One time a tire delaminated as we were driving down I-84, sending bits of rubber bouncing all around the road. Rick was wrestling the car to the shoulder, and I really should have said, “Let your tires tell you when they need replacing,” but I blew it. I shrieked. Darn. Would have been so good.)

We use the phrase still, for dramatic household troubles. Is water shooting in a fountain out of the toilet tank? Well, hey: Let your toilet tell you when it needs service.

The other night, I was reading in the comfy chair, and I realized I was being poked in the throat by a piece of wire protruding from inside the neck of my sweater.

What ho?

It was the underwire of my (formerly) favorite bra, which had sliced through its little casing and begun a journey north. It’s hard to fathom quite how it ended up poking me in the throat, but I was there.

The thing is, I was reading a murder mystery.

I used to love murder mysteries, and then I served on a real life jury for a real murder trial, and all the fun evaporated from the genre. I ought to have been able to keep fact and fiction separate, but I couldn’t do it. The mysteries agitated me, not a good thing for a lite diversion.

However, it’s been a while now, and this was a book for my beloved book club, so I was reading it. 

Ordinarily, I would have seen that wire and thought: Let your bra tell you…. But I was in a different head space. I tugged the wire all the way out, and it was pretty sharp, and I thought:  GREAT SET-UP! Because in my murder mystery years, I’d go someplace especially scenic and potentially dangerous- a saw mill or a waste treatment plant, or a construction site -and I’d think Ooh, THIS would be a good setting!

So I started to work the details: The victim was found with an underwire from her favorite bra piercing her throat! Looks like an accident! Well, sure, it LOOKS like an accident, but… Forensics says that the underwire casing wasn’t WORN through – it was SNIPPED OPEN! That wire was going to kill her eventually! Now, who had a motive, and access to her laundry, hmmm??

Another favorite phrase, also from our Central Oregon friends, just won’t work here. It’s “falling apart like a cheap suit,” and it’s used to bemoan the increasing infirmities of aging without, of course, actually moaning, which is not encouraged in the Code of the West. 

I, for one, have begun falling apart like a cheap suit in recent years.

Sadly, the phrase isn’t particularly punchy when used to describe clothing that is literally falling apart. It’s like saying a buffalo on roller skates is a lot like a buffalo on roller skates.

I do have a  pair of sweat pants that I wore all through the pandemic, and I treasure them for their pockets . They are soft and they have a drawstring waist, and they have been splattered with paint. They are beyond stretched out. The very weakest link, though, is the waistband. Repeated washing has thinned and frayed the fabric at the top of the waistband, so that the drawstring comes out the appropriate little buttonhole grommets in front, but it also comes out in about ten other places, creating an unusual lattice effect.

One of these days, the drawstring will stay around my waist, but the pants will collapse around my ankles. This is not a good set-up for a murder mystery, but it’s absolutely classic farce. Still, I’m hanging in with them. I’m going to let them tell me when we have to say goodbye.