Fresh Air: Do Denim! July 28, 2011
Editor’s Note: Planned for 2012, I’ll be releasing a new book I’m calling More Fresh Air. It will be a follow on to my first book, Fresh Air
, and will highlight other family stories about life on the farm. In the meantime, on Thursdays I run excerpts from my current book with some updated tidbits.
By Julie Murphree, excerpt from her book Fresh Air
If you wear cotton fabrics you probably have quite a bit of denim in your closet. Denim is so comfortable and such an American brand. It took me a while to be able to wear my first pair of Levi’s 501 Original jeans, since I was very skinny as a young girl. I was so proud of that first pair that I wore holes in the knees and seat before I gave them up, and even then I didn’t toss them. Ask me for them today and I’ll pull them out to show you. What’s that? No, I can’t wear them anymore.
Two of my favorite things: Denim Jeans and horses! Me with Gin Dusky Brooks.
Denim, as with so many other products, emerged because of a huge need and interest in the market. Says Stephen Yafa in his book, Big Cotton, “Your denims were jeans, your jeans were blue, so you wore blue jeans and that was that. Strauss quickly realized that pants were more comfortable than overalls, also that people formed a curiously intimate relationship with their denims, much like the affection they developed for a pet. There was a reason. As blue jeans become more pliable through laundering, they caressed areas of the body they initially clutched.”
My first pair of Levi’s 501 jeans are a testament to Yafa’s assertion.
Special Note: The first 10 people to sign up for a subscription to Julie’s Fresh Air will receive a free copy of Fresh Air!
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My mom loved her blue jeans so much, my sister and I have saved them like an heirloom. They have to be more than 65 years old now, and look every year of it. They also zipped up the side.
What does it say about the little girl from rural Indiana that what has been preserved by her children of her long and colorful life are her jeans and her fishing knife?
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