“We could steal time, just for one day
We can be heroes for ever and ever
What’d you say?”
Eno/Bowie
Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start…
“Why not try , I don’t know, at the beginning ?”
Thank you, Dear Reader, capital suggestion.
Depending on your place of birth, cultural heritage, and, or , religious persuasion, it all began with either a Big Bang, a Celestial Being who fancied a bit of gardening, Cosmic Eggs , or…
“That’s too far back !”
OK…I get you…When a Mammy and a Daddy love each other very, very much, and …
“Still too far back…and eeeewwww !”
Oh, I see what you mean, the start of this trip ?
“YES !!!”
Aah, yes , well even that started two years ago when my Soulmate asked if I’d like to go to New York for St.Patrick’s Day and I replied that I’d LOVE to go. She then said that we’d be running in a half marathon, and I said I’d still like to go, and then she said we were going with Georgie Crawford and I asked “What’s a Georgie Crawford ?”.
That’s how it started.
Since then we have travelled with the Good Glow gang on a number of occasions and met up on many more. We’ve been to New York, Arosa, Killarney, Glendalough, and Arosa again. We’ve met new people on each trip and met old friends on every subsequent one. The group dynamic is unique to each time and place, but all are wonderful. The only thing all of the trips have had in common is that I have studiously, and with an almost Jesuitical devotion, ignored each and every single one of Jamie’s training plans. For the uninitiated, Jamie is… Have you ever watched The Devil Wears Prada ? Well, he’s the Anne Hathaway to Georgie’s Meryl Streep.
This trip was to run a half marathon in Lake Garda.
Like all Good Glow trips, the next trip begins before you’ve finished the one you’re on. When we were in Arosa with the crew in January the most common topic of conversation, after the high of completing the run in the snow, and surviving the Finishers’ Party , was “Are you going to Lake Garda ?”.
We answered ‘Yes’.
From January until last week there were online check in’s with the group going to Lake Garda. There are several meet-ups for training runs, and guided training schedules, podcasts, talks, a very boisterous WhatsApp group, and zoom calls, and before you know it you’re heading to the airport at an ungodly hour on a Friday morning to fly out with 100 others to Riva-Lake Garda.
As with all of the groups I’m involved in, I try to sit back, unobtrusively observing , and only contributing when either asked directly , or if I feel that I have something positive and constructive to humbly and reluctantly add.
On Friday morning , while we were all travelling to the airport, people were posting about delays or holdups in traffic and someone mentioned that someone was stuck on the M50. The next reply was from Gerry :
“Please say it’s Paul, please say Paul, please say Paul.”
Whenever we pass a church on our trips my Soulmate and I always pop in and light a candle for Gerry’s wife Karen…God bless that lady.
My faith in the group was restored in the airport after we’d cleared security and we heard someone shout out our names, and as I looked around to see who it was I was embraced in a glorious hug by Helen M. We have met our friend Helen on a few occasions and we all walk a little lighter after spending just a few moments in her presence. We saw other members of the group that nodded and said a silent Hello. We were all identifiable by our Good Glow ‘Lago di Garda’ sweatshirts. We bumped into Georgie and Jamie and got hugs…not as good as Helen’s , but not bad either. Then we bumped into the Gavigans, and went for a coffee. Our Donegal neighbours have been on all the trips we’ve been on and we think of them as family…not up the front of the church at a wedding family, more the good craic family down the back. We had a brief, but engaging discussion on the civic architecture of Zurich and Kesh , a village in Fermanagh.
As we boarded the plane we saw more and more Good Glow navy sweatshirts, but it was only really when we all departed the plane in Bergamo that we could see how many of us there were as 100 navy sweatshirt attired people hopped on the same bus to the terminal. Here we met old friends, lots of old friends. Sheila, our dinner companion from Arosa, chatted to us on the bus as if the conversation simply carried on from then. It was going to be a good trip.
In the airport , while we waited for our coaches to take us to Riva, I went to the shop and certainly did NOT see Niamh and Helen Mc squeezing sandwiches for freshness. Lots of hugs ensued and when I asked if they had just been squeezing sandwiches for freshness , they adamantly denied it and Niamh made me promise not to say so in this blog. So to be clear, Niamh and Helen Mc were NOT squeezing sandwiches in that little shop down the end in Bergamo airport.
We slept on and off as the bus winded its way though tunnels and the edges of mountains towards Riva. The hotel was stunning. We threw our bags in the room and went to explore the gardens. We ended up in the bistro terrace bar of the hotel where almost every table had already been occupied by Good Glowers . It appeared that Aperol spritzs were mandatory. Eileen and I sat at a table and were joined by Helen and Aisling. Hugs were exchanged before anyone sat down. Conversation ensued and we were then joined by Niamh and Helen Mc and Nora, Philip , and the star of the show Sonny. Sonny is a baby with an infectious smile. We all decided to order food where we were rather than exploring Riva, and we had a great chat about everything, and everything.
Our ‘Welcome Party’ was due to start , so people were moving out into the garden to another terrace bar. When Eileen and I were on our own I said “Philip and Nora are a lovely couple.”
“Who ?” She replied.
“The couple with the baby.”
“It’s Laura !”
“Are you sure ? I called her Nora several times and she smiled.”
“That was probably pity…or simply that Niamh and Helen had warned her about you.”
Eileen went out to join everyone at the party, I went upstairs to put on long trousers and my CMAT ‘Dunboyne Diana’ jersey. These things are important. When I joined everyone on the terrace, it took me a good 20 minutes to get to Eileen as I met Maura, Ronan, Colm, Teilo, Ger, Catherine, Annette, Eugene, Gerry, Karen, Claudia, Kathryn , and Louise, and had a hug and a quick chat with each.
Good Glowers are great huggers.
Great conversations, laughs and catch ups ensued until the Chief of the Fun Police asked if we could all stop and pay attention. Jamie refuses to read anything I write, so without fear of him ever finding out , I can say, that he can certainly hold a crowd. He welcomed us all to Lake Garda, thanked us for joining them, asked us all to take a moment and appreciate where we were , who we were with, and what a privilege this all was. At least that’s what Eileen told me he said, I was chatting to the bar man about the wine he was serving, a rather cheeky Le Volte dell’Ornellia 2021.
Georgie said that we were her favourite people. I’m not sure if that was just Eileen and I , or if it included everyone from Monaghan. As I made my way back to Eileen , Jamie announced a game of sorts, where you had to stand together with people wearing the same colour. My lovely CMAT jersey was predominatly black, with large white lettering, and a pink stripe on each sleeve. I was deciding which group I should join when Louise, who must have read my thoughts grabbed my arm and dragged me towards her group saying “You’re pink !”. Louise was wearing a silky pink bomber jacket. I think part of the game was to see which group had the most members, but our group was busy comparing the shades of pink in our various outfits. Jamie than announced that each group had to nominate someone to speak on their behalf , and everyone in mine shouted ‘Paul !’, and then they made me wear Louise’s jacket. Which, if we are all honest, looked better on me anyway. Each spokesperson then had to say what is the worst advice you’ve received while training for a half marathon. When it came my turn I simply said “Make sure you follow Jamie’s training plan.” Surprisingly we didn’t win.
Tired and emotional, we went to bed. We were in the minority.
Most Saturday mornings will find me out in Rossmore Park , setting up for Monaghan Town’s weekly Parkrun. Attending a breathwork session, BEFORE breakfast, was a new experience. Hazel had worried the night before that no one would turn up for the session, as it was at 8.00 am and we’d all been travelling the day before and may have had a late night…and it was BEFORE breakfast. She needn’t have worried. All told there were 130 people on the trip, and just over 100 turned up for Hazel’s breathwork session. We had to move from where Hazel had originally hoped to host it, expecting a group of 20 or 30, so we found yet another terrace, and had it there. It was surreal. We lay down under a blue sky, surrounded by the Garda Mountains giving off the suns mellow reflection. Hazel guided us through the exercises and …calm descended on us. Being a muso, I was slightly distracted by the instrumental version of The Cinematic Orchestra’s beautiful song ‘To Build A Home’. The song itself is not in the least distracting, but if you’re familiar with the song’s heartbreaking video , you would understand. But that was only momentary. Hazel had us transported to another worldly time and place, where for the briefest of moments my 9 year old, and my 90 year old selves smiled and nodded at me. It was a wonderfully surreal moment , until one of them said “Go easy on that Crawford fella…”.
After our breathwork session we wandered to the end of the garden to go for a dip in Lake Garda. Ronan, Maura and a few other Yahoos were already there, splashing about. Eileen had joined them in moments and everyone else was getting ready, when I headed in …and discovered that this shore could have formed part of the Lough Derg pilgrimage. I bit my cheek with each step, and tried not to cry. I eventually made it in. I chatted to a few folk and told Eileen that I was heading out, and realised I’d have to walk back over the purgatory stones.
Close your eyes and picture a beach, blue water, and James Bond emerges, walking confidently , but nonchalantly towards the shore, clad in La Perla blue swim trunks…
I was none of those things.
I swam in as far as I could, and then floated until my chest was being scraped by the stones and then I tried to stand up. I got as far as all fours, and then started to scrape a path in front of me. Eugene came up to me and offered me his hand. “Here , I’ll help ye.” And he did. “Thanks” I said “They’re very sharp”.
“Yes, Paul, I struggled myself.” Eugene lied, then he patted my head. We both knew that I was indeed, a very brave soldier.
Eileen came over laughing. I said that I didn’t think many people saw me.
“Think again !” She said, laughing. “And Brendan Gavigan videoed it !”
Bastard !
We got changed and went down for breakfast, which was thoroughly enjoyed. At 10.30 we met back out where we’d been for our swim with all of the gang for a 3k shake out run. Three kms were run, and things were shook.
People gathered, chatted, paddled, took photos with friends, and it was the first time on the trip that you could see everyone together and relaxed. We had been together on the Ryan Air flight, bus, and at the Get Together, but here it was all out in the open and you could see everyone. It’s like at a wedding when everyone spills out of the church and we all wait around for everyone to finish congratulating the bride and groom, and you really see the group. That may make more sense in my head than it does writing it down. But I loved it. I met Lisa and shared an almighty hug. I got a squeeze from Georgie where she told me she loved me and then chastised me for never saying that I love her. We took many, many , many photos with lots of various combinations of friends, that we will always treasure.
My Soulmate and I pottered into Riva for a wander and a bite of lunch in the afternoon. It’s a beautiful place. Walking around the cobbled square I almost stood on a baby’s soother, and saw a few metres away a couple pushing a baby’s buggy with their backs to us. I picked it up and ran after them. I was about to call out to them when a ginger Labradoodle looked out from the side of the buggy. I could hear Eileen laughing hysterically behind me.
We chilled out for the evening.
The group WhatsApp featured lots of people mixing Speed Dust into drinks for the morning. Georgie had to ask people to stop explaining what it was to one of the group, Greg O’Shea. Yes, Greg O’Shea, the Olympian, who recently completed the 300 mile LA to Vegas non-stop ultra relay …and ambassador for Kinetica Sports nutrition.
Race Day is a day I dread. Obviously, no one forced me to take part, and I actually enjoy all of the runs and races, it’s the waiting for it to start.
This doesn’t happen on a Good Glow race day. There is always a buzz and everyone’s chatting, taking selfies, more group photos, and our resident vibe master, Ronan, takes control and had everyone singing ‘Wild Rover’.
At 9.30 am the bells of Collegiata di Santa Maria Assumpta peal out as we cross the starting line.
And we are running….
My Soulmate and I ran together for the first couple of kilometres. We usually separate as I begin to stop to take photos. I passed Becki and Aine. We would operate as a tag team together and overtake each other almost at each kilometre marker , until around 17k when they peeled away. I bumped into Sophie next wearing her rather groovy sunglasses. I took photos with two sets of stewards and got a shock when we passed the 5k marker. Running through Nago-Torbole I took photos and selfies with enthusiastic waitresses, more race stewards, and suppporters. I stopped and high fived a 2 year old on a pedestrian crossing, and then we entered the tunnels , carved out of the the mountains for traffic. They were closed for us and no matter how tired I got I did smile as I shouted ‘Echo’ each time I entered one.
Just as I was getting tired, I saw a dead snake and stopped and photographed it. You may think this is a pointless thing to do, but later that evening when Lisa and Sarah were arguing about whether there had been a dead snake, I was able to settle the argument with this very same photo. Pointless indeed !
Unbelievably , I was now passing the 15k marker and was again overtaken by Aine and Becki when I stopped to take a selfie with it. I was then accosted by a laughing and smiling Aisling and Bronagh jogging down the wee steep hill. Aine, Becki and I had our last selfie together at the 17k marker and they ran off when I stopped to take a photo of the weirdest warning sign ever, which was warning sunbathers not to use this beach as paragliders were landing. I got tired after that and was walking up a hill when I heard someone shout “Is that Paul Bond ?”. It was Claudia, running with Elaine. She grabbed me around the shoulder and ushered me up the hill. We ran in together.
The finish in Malcesine itself is stunning. There is a castle turret on a rocky inlet on the shore and you run in through tiny cobbled streets where the crowd is pressing in from both sides , just like in the Tour de France. Everyone roars your name and…it’s quite magical.
Claudia and I hugged each other to within an inch of our lives as soon as we crossed the line.
My Soulmate was waiting for me and then we started to congratulate each other as everyone finished. One of the great things about this group is that people who’d finished a good hour before I had, like Colm, and Niamh, all waited around near the finish line to cheer on the rest of us mortal humans. We had chats and hugs with Laura and Sophie and then we met up with Helen Mc , Aisling B, Niamh, Georgie and Jamie. We all hugged and someone might have said something nice to Jamie, mid-embrace… I think it was Eileen.
We took our leave of everyone and hobbled to the quay to get the ferry back to Riva.
In the hotel, after a quick shower, we had lunch with Timsie, Sarah, Norin, and Caroline, and re-ran the race together. They made me feel like an Olympian…and Olympian stuffing bruschetta, olives, and a large beer into himself.
After a snooze for an hour or two Eileen and I headed into Riva for dinner in Leon D’Oro, which is guarded by a lovely Italian granny wearing her cardigan and slippers. She directed us inside and we had a divine meal. If you ever find yourself hungry and in Riva, go here and thank me later. My Soulmate and I had a leisurely meal, chatted about great things, and minor things, and laughed a lot. At one point I chatted about a book I’m reading about the Panama Canal, and how making it led to the discovery of cures for malaria and deng fever. A moment or two later I said, “this is like a first date”. My Soulmate held my hand across the table, looked dreamily into my eyes and said “Honey, if you’d talked about the Panama canal on our first date, there wouldn’t have been a second.”
We slowly made our way across a vast distance of cobbled streets to the bar where our Finishers’ Party was taking place. This was a giddy hug fest. Everyone was in top form, delighted with themselves and thrilled for each other. We met lots of our old friends, made new ones, and had a wonderful time. But that doesn’t do it justice. It was like being at your birthday party and everyone is there because you asked them , because they are the people that you wanted to spend this great day. Here, it was everyone’s birthday.
As is customary at these parties, we have awards. We all pretend that they’re just a bit of fun, and would kill each other to get one at the same time.
Louise , who stole my silky pink bomber jacket got the Soul Sister award.
Annette, the best thing to come out of Kilkenny since….actually she is the best ever thing to come out of Kilkenny, was awarded MVP.
Colm, one of my most favouritist humans ever, ever, got the Rocketman award.
Niamh, non-sandwich squeezer, got the Rocketwoman award.
Declan, and Brendan , restorers of my faith in Donegal people ( sorry Grainne), and deleters of videos, won the Peas In A Pod award.
My race tag team partner, Becki , got the Hype Girl award. Did you know that she has three kids ? I do. She shouted it at me anytime I overtook her on the course.
My new friends , the shy and retiring, Claire and Brian, got this year’s Maura & Ronan award.
My spirit guide, Hazel, won the richly deserved Group BFF award.
And the biggest cheer of the night went to the true star of the whole weekend, Sonny, who now has 22 new uncles and 108 aunties. He got the Good Glow Mascot award.
There was one other award for something or other and the numpty who received it hugged Georgie, looked at Jamie, and hugged Georgie again. He was foolishly handed the mike and said :
“Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking , I would just like to say that the most significant person that has contributed so much to this trip is Brendan Gavigan, who has promised never to show the video he took of me crawling out of Lake Garda on my hands and knees. Because as my wife Eileen, my Soulmate , knows , although I am a very manly man, I am cursed with the feet of a ballerina. So cheers Brendan, delete !”
After that the party really started. I kissed Declan, danced with Eileen, had double whiskeys with Colm and Teilo, told Eugene that he was my saviour and that I was getting a tattoo of him, had a group hug with Helena, Grainne, and Niamh, exchanged wise words with Ronan, Maura, Sharon and Norman, and then we were the first to leave. Just before we left, I gave Georgie one last hug and I told her that I loved her, always.
My Soulmate and I walked home , arm in arm and laughed and giggled like teenagers at what a night we’d had. We slept the sleep of contented souls.
A hundred or so of us quietly made our way to Verona airport the next day and slept on the flight home. We gathered together one last time at the baggage carousel and hugged our final hugs.
As Eileen and I left the airport one of us cried…a little.
Jamie and Georgie can’t imagine the impact they have on so many of us, and the sheer joy they allow us all to have together. They have created a wonderful community where we can be ourselves. I hope they know…at least, I hope Georgie knows, I think Jamie would be absolutely unbearable if he knew.
One of my favourite Disney characters is Tigger, and to paraphrase him :
“The wonderful thing about Good Glowers, is Good Glowers are wonderful things.”
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is for you , Do You Realise ?
P.P.S This is just for Sonny.
P.P.PS. This is the audio, NOT a podcast, of an older blog
P.P.P.PS This is this week’s worky blog
Jeans
Things often become accepted wisdom with little or no foundation in history or known record. This annoys some people. I am not one of those people. I find it fascinating that :
- Coca Cola did not invent the modern image of Santa Claus in a marketing campaign. He was already established in popular culture as that jolly bearded weirdo long before Coca Cola was invented.
- St. Patrick’s character was always portrayed as wearing blue robes rather than green and only started to change in the late 18th century as the shamrock was adopted as a symbol of Irish identity and opposition to rule from England. There is even a colour called St.Patrick’s Blue.
- Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs was not the first feature length animated cartoon.
- Fortune Cookies are not originally Chinese. They were Japanese in origin, and introduced to America by returning WWII soldiers. In China they are rarely used, and are considered an American snack.
- Old Roman and Greek classical marble statues were painted in bright colours when they were originally made. The paint faded and no one remembered.
- Mussels that do not open when cooked are safe to eat.
- Tutankhamun’s tomb did not have a seal with a curse on it against anyone who opened it.
- Julius Caesar did not say “Et tu, Brute?2 when he was assassinated. This was an invention by William Shaespeare.
- Vikings did not wear horns on their helmets.
- The spiciest part of chilli peppers are NOT the seeds. It’s the white pulpy bit that the seeds area attached to that are the spiciest.
- ‘Allspice’ is not a combination of spices, it’s a single Caribbean spice.
- The Sun is not yellow.
- Bats do not have poor vision.
- NASA did not spend millions of dollars developing a pen for astronauts to use in space , while the Russian cosmonauts used pencils. Pencils couldn’t be used as the lead shavings could cause damage. Nasa bought 400 pens at $6 each…and the Soviets bought the same pens.
- The chicken ball is not Chinese, it is an Irish_Chinese takeaway invention and was introduced in The Happy Garden on Park St., in Monaghan, in 1978.
- Columbus did not set out to prove the world was round. Everyone knew it was round, they just didn’t believe him that it was a shorter route to the Indies…and they were right.
- Monkeys in the wild do not eat bananas.
- The Great Wall of China can not be seen from space.
- Lightening does strike twice in the exact same place…and on occasion the same person
- There is no ‘Alpha’ in a wolf pack. Wolves operate as a family unit, not a tribe.
- Urinating on a jellyfish sting will actually make it worse…in many ways.
- Bulls are not enraged or antagonized by the colour red.
- Mice do not like cheese, but will eat it if there is nothing else.
- Eating carrots has no effect on your eyesight. This idea was ‘invented by the British Dept. of Agriculture during WWII, as they had no fresh food imports, but had lots of homegrown carrots and wanted to encourage lids to eat them.
- Rabbits don’t like carrots. Bugs Bunny only ate them in his cartoons because they wouldn’t allow him to be portrayed smoking a cigar.
- Levi Strauss did NOT invent denim, or the jean.
At a push I can probably make each one of those relevant to Monaghan’s 4th largest workwear store, but the easiest one is the last one, about jeans. Jeans have been worn since the 16th century, and were originally made from a cotton corduroy in Genoa. They were copied by French tailors in Nimes a century later and they referred to the style as Gênes , as this is the French for Genoa. They made them from a tougher weaved cotton twill which in turn was referred to as being from Nimes, or ‘de Nimes’, and that’s how we ended up referring to them as denim and jeans.
But what people refer to as jeans to day, with the rivets as reinforcements at the pockets was largely due to a gentleman called Ned McGowan, who’s parents left the family pub behind them in the shambles in Clones and settled in Philadelphia. Ned , as a child, accompanied his father to a local saddlers where he asked the saddler to reinforce the side seams and a pocket on his trousers with saddle rivets. He told his son that it had been a tradition in Clones that whenever your Sunday best trousers had lost their gleanm that you started using them for work, and as they weren’t designed for labour in the first place, you’d take them up to William McMahon’s Saddlery in The Diamond in Clones and he’d rivet them for you. Both Ned and the Philadelphian saddler thought that he was quite mad.
Ned McGowan could very well be one of the most famous Monaghan men you’ve never heard of. He lived quite the life. He became a lawyer. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1842 and then resigned after attacking another assembly member with a chair on the floor during a debate. In fairness, the other guy had already stabbed him with a pen. He then got elected as a Police Superintendent before being implacted in a bank robbery in 1848. He was charged, convicted, and then cleared.
He decided that Pennsylvania was no longer for him and headed to California. The gold rush was in full swing and he began his new life by setting up a roulette wheel above a brothel. This made him popular, and he got appointed as a judge to the Court of Quarter Sessions in San Francisco. He was known to bring a pistol to court and point it at claimants and lawyers who argued back with him. He loaned the same pistol to a defendant that he believed to be innocent and was being harassed by a lynch mob. This defendant used the pistol to shoot dead the leader of the lynch mob, who in turn lynched him, and then sought out McGowan to lynch him.
Depending on which source you read he escaped either disguised as a Mexican, or rolled up in a carpet, or a combination of both. In any case he fled to Canada in 1858 to pursue his luck in the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.
It was here that he met a sad soul , who seemed to have had even worse luck , called Jacob Davis, a Russian émigré. Jacob had arrived in Fraser Canyon from San Francisco a month after Ned. He’d left Russia in 1854 for New York, where he tried tailoring before moving on to Maine, where he had no more success, and ended up in San Francisco, where, you guessed, he was unsuccessful in his tailoring. With little money left he headed North you the goldfields of Fraser Canyon to try his luck.
In any goldrush that has ever happened, very, very few of the prospectors make any money. It is all of the ancillary suppliers and hangers on that usually soak up all of the cash that anyone makes from finding any gold. Brothel keepers, bar owners, food and hardware suppliers can make fortunes. Ned McGowan and a few fellow travellers set up a bar called Hill’s Bar on one side of the river, while rivals set up another on the opposite side. In Hill’s Bar one evening Ned and Jacob fell into conversation and as Jacob explained his history of failed tailoring exploits , Ned laughed and recounted the story of his grandfather in Clones getting old trousers fortified with saddle rivets.
“That is genius !” Jacob explained.
“Really ? Everyone thought he was mad, my Dad said he used to be mortified when people would see his father walking past and ask how his suit of armour was doing.”
“But , here, I see every day, men, with droopy bottoms , pockets hanging off , after their days digging. These rivets would solve everything.”
Ned was laughing.
“What is funny ?”
“Oh, sorry, you saying ‘droopy’ reminded me of my Mother calling out to me on the way to mass, ‘Hurry up droopy drawers’”.
Jacob laughed.
As the night wore on they planned to set up a sowing machine in the back room of the bar and get a bag of rivets and start a company together making and repairing work trousers. They would make a fortune.
They would have made a fortune together, had Ned not followed the habit of a lifetime and caused chaos , starting the very next day, by starting a war with the bar opposite, kidnapping it’s owner and assaulting anyone who tried to free him. The Governor called in the army and Ned was arrested. But he charmed the arresting officer , the judge, and the jury. The case was dismissed, but Ned was tired of the goldrush. He sold his stake in the bar for $500 and had $5000 worth of gold dust and left.
Jacob made some trouser repairs for friends and had some luck panning for gold on a friend’s claim. He had better luck when he met his future wife, Annie. After a few years and a few kids together they upped sticks and moved to Reno, Nevada, a burgeoning railroad town. He finally set up the tailoring business that he’d always wanted to, and remembering that night with Ned McGowan in Hill’s Bar, he made wagon covers, tents, and work coveralls , all reinforced with rivets at their stress points. The railway workers raved about the coveralls and trousers and soon he was struggling to keep up with demand.
His denim supplier , Levi Strauss, got curious about how this tailor in a tiny town was quickly becoming his largest customer and went to visit him. They struck up a friendship immediately and Strauss agreed to back Davis and invested money in a premises to manufacture the trousers and they applied for a patent for the placement of the rivets, which was granted. Davis also came up with the distinctive back pocket design which is still used to day.
The only real change to Jacob’s original patent and design for the placement of the rivets is that, originally there was a rivet at the bottom of the fly at the front. On one occasion , while wearing a pair of his jeans at a campfire, Levi Strauss was hunkered down , toasting marshmallows for his kids, and leapt up screaming in the air as the ‘crotch’ rivet heated up and burned through his long johns. Crotch rivets were removed from production the very next day.
I sometimes think that only for his attraction to chaos, we might all have a pair of Ned’s 501’s in the wardrobe somewhere.
Oh ! Just remembered that this is supposed to be work related, so , yeah, we stock Carhartt jeans.
Cheers,
Paul
