Sometime in my junior year my mom discovered the most magical
clothing shopping experience. Typically I would only judge clothes
shopping based on speed and cheapness. I had no personal style and
ever since I started paying for my own clothes I was not picky about
what covered my body. I wore mainly hand-me-down, gifts, clothes
stolen from my brother or mom and thrift store fare. That was until
my mom found the Eddie Buaer surplus sale. Every year they would
round up all the unsold and unsaleable clothes and truck them to a
convention center in Salt Lake City and sell them at low low prices.
It was put on no frills with minimal sorting and pricing was
sometimes done by class instead of by item. The clothes were not
exactly in style, I mean they were remaindered after all and being
sold on pallets and in huge crates. There was a lot more corduroy
then was in fashion at that exact moment, or ever, truth be told.
There were lots of vests and jackets that were pretty cool and only a
couple of bucks a piece they started looking really good. My mom got
a temp job doing something for the sale that gave her even deeper
discounts on the ten peasant collar corduroy shirts that I purchased.
I bought boots, a camel hair jacket that was technically too large
for me, a lot of slacks and jeans and a vest or two. The next day at
school I was all of the sudden viciously over dressed. I was wearing
some new boots, some nice slacks, a contraption belt, a cream wool
shirt and a vest. Not exactly a subtle transformation. Several people
asked if I had some sort of official business to get o that day like
a job interview or a funeral or something. I told them I did not but
that they were looking at about 18 dollars worth of the finest
discount luxury clothes and that they could get in on it too if they
wanted to run up to Salt Lake with me when a new shipment landed.
Several of my friends did and many of them scored some top quality
slightly out of style clothes. We were all dressed in eclectic mixes
of clothes for the next couple of years like mental patients or
proto-hipsters years before it was cool to look like you were dressed
by someone with the fashion sense of a home schooled idiot. I still
own several of the shirts, the boots and a vest. Best twenty dollars
I ever spent.
