End of an era...

A beautiful day, but still chilly - never got out of the 50s, but the sun is shining.  It would be easy to sit on the couch and watch daytime TV.  Nope.  I sold two guitars I had for sale this morning.  No, that is not the end of the era mentioned in the title - one guitar is one of the oldest acoustics I own, the other was the newest.  Neither was getting played, and it was good to make room.

After a leisurely lunch out and a bit of shopping, we headed for the storage unit.  Nothing we needed to do with the motorhome or the boat trailer; Joan bought a portable coat closet, and we went through a couple bins that had motorcycle gear and a bunch of coats.  We have ridden motorcycles for just over 50 years, so there were some interesting finds: the first pair of Gor-Tex boots I owned...

A BMW Savannah 2 armored jacket...

Assorted leather motorcycle jackets, pants, chaps, etc...

The end of the era...

My sister Joan gave me that fringed leather jacket in 1969.  Someone got into our house around that time, and stole the only winter jacket I owned, a new(ish) pair of jeans, a pair of boots, and a meager coin collection.  It was November, and cold.  My sister bought me that coat for Christmas, but gave it to me early so I'd have a jacket to wear.  It was the first leather anything that I owned (besides boots and a baseball glove), and in 1969, suede leather with fringe was stylin'!  I loved the smell of it... it smelled like mis-spent youth!

Billy (Dennis Hopper) in Easy Rider wore a fringed leather jacket.  Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young all wore fringed leather jackets.  I loved that jacket.  I wore it in the snow and the rain... that kind of wet isn't kind to suede leather, but it weathered the weather.  I wore it on my motorcycle.  It was the jacket I was wearing a few years later when I came home from playing in a band (I was working in the new guitar player in Canada), and the Customs agent went through my luggage and my pockets, but paid extra attention to that jacket.  "Damn hippies!"

Until we moved away from Spearfish, that jacket has been in a closet.  When we moved into our current house, the jacket went into a bin in a storage unit.  It was stiff and skanky when it came out of that bin this afternoon.  And a sad moment when I put it in a dumpster today.  (Sigh)

Another casualty of streamlining and clearing clutter.   I will probably hang onto that BMW jacket... but, it doesn't take me back to my youth.  Well, maybe back to my 50s.  ;-)