Did your grandpa wear a suit for dinner? I have a book of vintage photos from Brown County. In most of these shots, people are wearing suits and dresses. They look pretty sharp really. It reminds me of a song by John Prine that tells about how his grandpa dressed every day for dinner. He put on a suit and tie, just to sit down at the table in his own home. Guests or no guests, that was how many in earlier generations did every day life. It was what was handed down to them from older generations than their own.
The tradition of dressing for dinner, for example, is truly very old, coming from European nobles who changed their clothes every few hours. They had an outfit for each activity in a day. The lower classes imitated this extravagant show to the best of their ability, and the custom followed over into America. For the majority of our history, dressing for dinner was simply done, but it was not only dinner that called for natty looking suits like Mr. MacCaver is sporting in the picture above. In 1941, suits were worn on any and all occasions, and even no occasion at all. Going to town. Going to church. Going out of town. Whatever was happening, people reflected the rhythms of life, the events in a day, in their choice of attire.
Wearing a dress or a suit in everyday life is a reflection of an attitude towards ourselves and the world that for the most part, we no longer possess. It was a way for some to just show off money or manners (which were once highly valued), but also a change in attire was a method for showing respect for one’s culture, family and friends. I’m not sure when it started going out of fashion, exactly when blue jeans and t-shirts took over even the Sunday morning church crowd. I think sometime in the 50s is when things started to change that way. Slowly, people who still dressed for going to town were looked on by the younger generations as outdated, stuffed shirt types that stood in the way of the future. Could that have been a mistaken idea, thinking that there was no real reason to look our best in town or at the dinner table?
Maybe a man wanted his wife and kids to know that having a meal with them every day is an important occasion, to show, perhaps, that it matters to him when everyone is there, and they have something to eat. Maybe a woman put on a pretty dress for that reason as well–to show appreciation for a special time of the day. Dressing up to go to town was probably also a show of respect and appreciation for others. At some point, few of us, if any, still cared, or perhaps even knew about, such ways of living and a form of corporate cultural expression of respect and honor.
Time is like a river they say, and social ideals flow along with it. You can’t go backwards to the way things used to be, you can’t stop it or even slow it down. You can, however, divert a little stream or two at times, simply by introducing your own ideas of what is important. Maybe a little retro redesign, a small way to show honor or respect for others, is a good response to a culture that seems to be sliding downhill quite quickly.
I hum“Grandpa wore his suit to dinner” while I dress to go into town. It’s a tiny diversion of the river of culture, and won’t change much of anything but myself. Still, that is one, right? I don’t expect anyone else to do it, but it is fun to dress well, to think about how to show the people you live around that you care about them and the community. Professor MacCarver looked fabulous with his suit coat and his hat at that sassy angle. He would sure stand out on the streets downtown today if we saw him walk past. Maybe I can get my hat positioned just at that perfect angle the professor discovered.
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].
