It wasn’t my birthday, nor a day of any significance. It was simply a day that I would see my brother for the last time in a place that he has called home for the past thirty five years or so. Boxes and cartons were everywhere. The careful arrangements and details that Janet had given to the home were now dismantled and only a few reminders of what had been were now in evidence.
What can you say? We move on… to other temporary addresses.
And you know… you can’t take everything with you. Your kids can take some, some gets sent to Goodwill & some simply gets tossed.
Thank God Paul didn’t toss the picture.
Oh, I knew the picture well.
You would get off the elevator on the fifth floor of our building on 44th St., and there in the vestibule, just outside my Father’s office, near the water cooler and by the wooden tub bar (a gift from Seymour Landman) was a picture of my Father and his former partner, Lou Prager.
They were dressed in full Scottish regalia, kilts and all: hill jackets, weskits, crisp white shirts with ruffled matching ascots, plaid caps, Argyll knee socks with daggers and whatever-that-fur-purse-is-called.
There were two typewritten labels identifying the “Highlanders”. Yellow with age, to match the scotch tape that affixed them to the protective glass, the labels were marked “Mac Winston” and “Mac Prager.”
It is a black and white photograph so we are deprived of the richness of the colours that make up the Tartan Plaids they wore. But judging from the settings, I reckon that Louie is in Dress Campbell, while my Dad is fitted out in Black Watch. Two Jewish guys… it’s hard to imagine a more improbable photograph.
Legend has it that Dad was the first (OK… so one of the first) to recognize the beauty of Clan Plaids and then adapt those distinctive patterns to “every day” forms of dress. Not just for kilts or mess attire in Scottish Regiments. Chipp promoted Tartan plaid trousers, sport coats and dinner jackets to a generation of “ivy league” dressers, and not to just folks of Scottish descent. The photograph was used as a post card sent to Chipp’s mailing list… a publicity thing.
This would have been in 1953 or ’54 (maybe even a year earlier?). Dad would have been 42 or so in the picture, thirteen years my junior, and already having accomplished much. Both men are sporting pleasant smiles. My gosh, did Dad have a good smile. Their eyes are slim and look nearly closed. Perhaps a dram to much whisky the night before? Yeah, that sounds right.
Two young men with vision.
I never knew Louie; but Dad would call him the best salesman he ever knew. Dad was the best salesman I ever knew.
Thanks Paul. Thank you for saving the photograph… for safeguarding a memory that I will continue to cherish.