I was watching the old Dick Van Dyke show the other night and couldn’t help but noticing the men’s pants—specifically the hem of their pants. They stop at the ankles. In 1960 that was the sartorial ideal: trousers that stopped at the ankles. The hem of men’s pants have never been higher since.

My friends and I would have called these “flood pants” or “farmer pants.” For anybody who came of age between 1970 and 1990,  men’s pants were supposed to “break” just below the shin and lie on top of the shoe. You weren’t supposed to feel your pant leg fluttering about your ankles when you walked. And, when you sat, you didn’t have to worry about your pant leg riding up to your calf.

My mother always hemmed my pants. She taught us boys how to do it too. If you didn’t hem your pants, you looked like a clown, your pants-ends bunched on top of your shoe. This has changed. It seems nobody hems pants anymore. As a result, most of us men are wearing pants that are way too long.  It does look clownish, I must admit. But, for most of us, it’s an inevitable necessity for the following reasons:

1) Nobody knows how to hem pants anymore. Why? Times have changed. Most young men and women are growing up without having had any domestic training. I once dated a woman who didn’t know that when you iron clothes you need to dampen them to press out the wrinkles.

2) If you do know how to hem pants, you don’t have time to do it. I’m not good at hemming, have no patience for it, and find it maddeningly laborious.

3) If you can find a professional to do it, it costs too much–as much as half the price of the pants themselves. Most pants don’t last long enough to warrant that kind of investment. At bottom, it’s an expenditure too dear for these hard times.

I don’t know if or when pants hems will rise again. I can recall when, as a boy, my pants legs were sometimes too short, a fact I would not notice until my peers made fun of me. My humiliation could not have been greater had I been naked. Too-short trousers still carry that stigma. As for the opposite, the too-long trousers, it seems we’ve learned to live with them. About once a week, I tell myself that my pants are too long–I carry too much fabric on my shoes. I don’t like it and I suspect that, years from now, I will look back and cringe at what we now consider appropriate.

I know, I know, it’s just fashion, a bullying arbitrary notion of what is and isn’t cool. Very likely, some day men will be wearing body stockings made of recycled tissue paper and heaven forbid your tissue isn’t black or translucent or ornamented with crushed fire-flies. But, for now, consider this: if you were to get all of your pants hemmed to the classically appropriate length tomorrow, people might take notice but no one would make fun of you.

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Last night, I came home from the grocery store and set my bags on the kitchen counter. For dinner, I’d bought a roasted chicken from Whole Foods. Those chickens aren’t cheap (cheep) but they’re really convenient. We get two meals from one, then make soup from the left-overs.

My groceries parked, I went upstairs to see Jill. She was on the internet, reading about Hartford, CT, which we’re going to visit next week. I checked my own email. Ten minutes later, we both went downstairs to put away the groceries.

The first thing I noticed was that the cardboard carrier for the roasted chicken container was lying on the floor. I knew this was trouble. Frieda, our basset hound, is notorious (in our household) for stealing food from tables and countertops. I thought I’d put the chicken in a safe place, six inches from the counter’s edge. Frieda isn’t a big dog, but she’s long and, where food is concerned, she’s willing to stretch. Jill and I have been amazed at her ability to get things she really wants from hard-to-reach places.

This time, we were doubly amazed. Within the span of ten minutes, she had not only sneaked the chicken — quietly — from the countertop, but then carried it into the pantry, where she wouldn’t be heard. And then she ate the entire chicken. She left nothing behind, not even a nib of bone. Ten minutes.

Jill and I howled in protest and moaned our regret and frustration. Frieda just stared up at us expectantly, wagging her tail. She was still hungry. Since we had NOT caught her in the act, we couldn’t scold or punish her. But we were pissed off, me especially, as I had to make dinner.

What made it all the more painful for us was the fact that Frieda doesn’t exactly enjoy eating—it’s not like she takes her time or savors the flavor. She just gobbles down whatever she can as fast as she can. This is a dog that will eat her own turds on occasion. Now, let me confess that we have had Frieda on a diet. She was getting heavy, which can cause basset hounds back problems. But, the truth is, she was just as ravenous when she wasn’t dieting as she is now.

Basset hounds are all nose. They want nothing but food, it seems, and will spend most of their waking hours sniffing it out and then go to any lengths to get at it. The only good thing about this trait, at least in Frieda’s case, is that she’ll eat anything –really, anything–you give her. This comes in handy when she needs medicine. Hand her a pill, any kind of pill, and she’ll eat it without hesitation. If you want to see an example of her appetite, check out this video:what will Frieda eat?

After Frieda ate the whole chicken, we worried that she might have some problems digesting her treat. She had a perceptible bulge in her belly but she slept well and, apparently, she’s not going to suffer either indigestion or constipation. She possesses exceptional genes, we have decided–survivor genes. She’s a dog that could live through strive and famine and nuclear war because she will not be thwarted. In her way, Frieda is a super dog.

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Mrs. Park, the widowed Korean lady who did my laundry, has disappeared, her shop shuttered since September, the store emptied, a “closed” sign in the window. For nearly 20 years, ever since I moved to Baltimore, I’ve been taking my laundry to her. Even after I moved out of the neighborhood, I kept going to her because she did good work, she was pleasant, and I’m a loyal customer.

Every time I went in, she’d grin and say, “Oh, best customer!” Then she’d ask me how I was. Then: “Your wife….?” And she’d nod knowingly, her eyebrows raised in expectation of the good news I never delivered. She seemed desperately hopeful that Jill and I would have a baby. For a woman of her generation (she’s about 75), children–the family–are everything. She would tell me about her grown children and her grandchildren. I’d ooo! and ah! at her snapshots.

Jill and I chose not to have children for many reasons. We don’t regret that decision. Still, I didn’t want to disappoint Mrs. Park, and so I didn’t tell her that Jill and I would never have a baby, that we’ve put our energies and interests elsewhere. It just seemed easier not to get into it. As a result, I’m afraid that Mrs. Park pitied me, thinking, Poor man! What is life without children?

Mrs. Park was in very good health, wiry and quick-moving. I doubt that she has fallen ill or worse. Seven years ago, somebody robbed her in the shop, then shoved her to the floor. She was lucky she broke no bones. I thought for sure she’d retire after that. But she came back the next week, angry at the robber and determined to stay put. On his way out, the robber had wrenched the door off its hinges. It was never the same after that. Each time I walked into the shop, I noticed how the door wouldn’t shut right and I wondered if Mrs. Park thought of the robber when she struggled to shut the now-stubborn door.

Last September, she announced that her daughter and husband had invited her to stay with them in Colorado for a month. She had visited her children many times (she has a son in California) and, on several occasions, had closed the store for as long as two weeks. But she had never cleared out the store, as she was doing this time. I wondered if her daughter had asked her to do this, if this was a scheme to disengage her mother from her beloved business. I imagined that, once Mrs. Park was in Colorado, her daughter would convince her to stay–for the sake of the grandchildren. How could grandma resist?

Mrs. Park betrayed no suspicions of her own. She promised that she’d return on Oct. 14 to resume business. But October came and went and the store remained closed. I drove by every week for two months and then, finally, I admitted to myself that my Korean friend was not returning. Her daughter’s plan had worked. No doubt, Mrs. Park has a nice room in her daughter’s house–and her daughter has a 24/7 baby-sitter, not to mention an energetic seamstress and homemaker. Am I being uncharitable?

I must confess, I worried about Mrs. Park. How long could she have kept on in that little shop? Her two grandchildren will keep her plenty busy. She’ll cook for the family and treat them to traditional delights and everyone’s life will be richer for it. And, at last, Mrs. Park will have better things to worry about than whether or not her customers have children of their own.

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• Take OFF Your Belt! (2)

Every year the City calls me in for jury duty. But, because I’m very liberal and over-educated, nobody picks me for a jury. Still, they call me and I come. I know many people who are never called in. It’s like a lottery.

This year, I showed up at the court house door dutifully at 8:25 A.M. on the appointed day. Nobody was waiting to enter at the security scanning station. As I stepped up, the Sheriff’s deputy on duty—a short woman of middle age—issued commands like a drill sergeant: “Move up. Put your bags on the conveyor. Remove all metal objects, coins, possessions. Place them on the conveyor.”

I complied.

I’m a compliant guy. Most of us are. We’ve spent too much time in the TSA lines. We’ve become cowlike in our submission, shuffling through the cordoned chutes of security.

“Take off your belt!” the deputy said loudly. Maybe I wasn’t moving fast enough for her. But nobody stood behind or ahead of me. I had already put my bags on the conveyor. “Take OFF your belt!” Now she was shouting.

I said, “Take it easy.”

“Don’t YOU tell me to take it EASY!” she snapped. “Take OFF your belt!”

It was as if she were telling an armed-and-dangerous perp to Get OUT of the CAR.

Confused and a little frightened, I did as she demanded. Then I put my belt on the scanner’s conveyor, where I thought she wanted it.

“DON’T put your belt there!” she shouted. “I didn’t TELL you to put it there!” She snatched up my belt and handed it back to me. By this time I had taken off my coat because I thought she wanted my coat on the conveyor belt.

“I didn’t TELL you to take OFF your coat!” she shouted. ” Put your coat ON!”

I must have stared at her as I would have stared at an oncoming train. Mind you, on a normal day, I’d still be in bed, dreaming of running barefoot through a field of sunflowers.

“Put your coat ON!” she shouted. “PUT your coat ON!”

I did as she commanded. Then, in frustration and disgust, I dropped my belt into the plastic box she held.

“That’s IT!” she announced. “He’s got an ATTITUDE!” Her fellow officer behind the deck just stared. Maybe everybody was frightened of the deputy. Now the deputy turned to me: “You’re not coming in this way. YOU go around to Saint Paul Street!”

“What?” I stuttered.

“Around to SAINT Paul STREET!” she shouted.

I recalled the time that Mr. Altman kicked me out of fourth grade music class because I was singing our “tra-la-la” chorus derisively. He was a big man, a slob and a bully. He insulted us routinely by giving us the most insipid, infantile songs to sing. I loathed him. “WHO was that?” he demanded after silencing us. “WHO was singing like THAT?” Then his rodent eyes met mine. I felt my face burning. Did a cruel smile tug at Mr. Altman’s chapped lips? “You, Tanner, OUT!”

The deputy heaped my bags and my belt into my open hands and commanded: “Around the block, to the SAINT PAUL entrance!”

Amazed and befuddled, I walked past another officer who shook his head in disbelief (he looked frightened too), I pushed through the huge court house doors, then nearly tripped on the big step down. Another man was walking in. He must have seen my shaken expression. “You all right?” he asked with concern. I couldn’t look at him. I only nodded and waved an okay, my head resounding with a Kafkaesque chorus of tra la las.

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• The Lady Vanishes! (2)

On our way to dump our Christmas tree Saturday afternoon, we picked up a stray dog. A small, female pit bull mix, it was clearly a run-away—skittish and young and fairly well fed. Baltimore may be the nation’s capital for pit bulls. This one was wandering through our neighborhood and, for a moment, came up to us then darted away as we loaded our dried-out tree into the car. When we spied the dog minutes later, scampering along the sidewalk, its tail between its legs, Jill insisted I pull over. She had brought a leash and a couple of dog biscuits.

The pup was so frightened, it peed as Jill cornered it. A couple of passersby helped us get the leash around its neck. The dog was growling and cowering. Then I did the Dog Whisperer routine and took control, acting with full confidence and pretending that nothing was wrong and we were going to walk. The pup yelped but complied. When we got to Jill’s CRV (a little 4-wheel drive), Jill made some room in the back, pushing the tree aside. The pup looked interested. I scooped up the dog and deposited her inside.

We drove to the SPCA. But they wouldn’t take our stray. She was too wild. Apparently the pup had been tied in someone’s back yard, maybe being readied for breeding or worse. In any case, it was thoroughly unsocialized and frightened of people. “Oh, she’s so fearful!” the SPCA vet said. She sent us to Animal Control. When I reached over to reassure the pup, she growled and shrank away. Never mind that she had accepted my comfort earlier.

Jill named the dog Sulky because the dog seemed inconsolable. She wouldn’t eat anything we offered her. Sulky calmed a bit as we drove. But, then, before we arrived at Animal Control, in downtown Baltimore’s back bay, she got car sick. She heaved and heaved. She had probably never been in a car. Animal Control’s parking lot was packed on this Saturday afternoon. A place like that is both disheartening and encouraging—we witnessed adoptions and drop-offs. One guy brought a big, beautiful all-white American bull that had been tied to a fence for three days. “I got fed up watching it sitting out there and waiting for somebody to take care of it,” the good neighbor said.

A kind Animal Control employee came out and talked to Sulky for a few minutes. “Don’t growl,” she scolded the dog. Sulky did not take kindly to another attempted leashing. But eventually she yielded and was led away. We bid her a sad farewell.

Before the day’s end, we dumped our tree at the recycling center, where it will be ground into mulch. You’ve never smelled as lovely a smell as ground pine trees. Those piles of trees got me thinking about dogs. We have two at home. And two cats. All of them shelter animals. Too many dogs and cats in the world with too few homes. But, I guess, you already knew that.

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