The Brooks Brothers Suit

I always tried hard to be off the road before Thanksgiving. By that point, travel by thumb was becoming a chancy proposition. And camping out in the woods required more than a pancho and a few blankets.
But I had a need, one November first. I had to be in a middling size city in Connecticut for a gig that Saturday.
Although I started late, I figured that I’d make it before dark, sleep on a sofa at someone’s house, and be there for the gig the next evening. I was wrong.

Getting rides was not happening. It was almost dark when I stumbled across a little stream to a thicket of woods where I figured I’d make an overnight camp. Carefully stepping from stone to stone, I managed to misstep and fall into the stream. My last dry act was to toss the guitar to the other side of the stream. Now I was wet. The clothes in my pack for the gig were also wet—no dry clothes to sleep in.

Wet and cold, I started a small fire and spread all my wet clothes out so they could dry. This looked like it was going to be a challenging evening. Then I looked over into the field behind me. There stood a nattily attired scarecrow. The three-piece suit it wore was entirely better than anything I owned. No, I thought. But it’s dry, I then thought. Let’s get it.

It took minutes to strip the scarecrow and dress it in my worn and soaked duds. I then retired to my fire and feasted on some candy bars that I kept stored in the pack for emergencies like this. It was a moment of resourcefulness in the face of adversity, and it felt empowering.

The following day, I debated redressing the scarecrow in its suit but decided that dry cleaning would make it the best feature of my sad and tawdry wardrobe. Besides, anyone who could afford to discard an excellent Brooks Brothers suit for a scarecrow wouldn’t miss it. I dressed in my now dry spares and packed away the suit.

In about ten minutes, I was in a nearby roadhouse. The $.99 breakfast special was terrific. I ate and listened to the local gossip. The gossip stopped me cold.

It turned out that Mrs. Doughtry wanted to play a joke on her husband. He was skinny ( like I was in those days), and she couldn’t fatten up no matter how good her cooking was. As a joke, she had dressed their garden scarecrow in his best Brooks Brothers suit. But this morning, when she showed him her joke, the scarecrow was attired in some bums-worn-out jeans and a chambray shirt. Sheriff Doughtry was not amused and was looking for whoever had swiped the suit.

Instead of hitchhiking, I walked calmly to the nearby bus terminal and took the next bus to where I was going. The last person I wanted to run into while hitching was an angry sheriff who wanted to know how his Brooks Brothers suit had wound up in my backpack.

I wore the suit for several years. It was eventually stolen from my pack, but I was glad to see it gone by then. I felt a bit guilty every time I wore it.

So, if you come across a well-attired scarecrow, think twice before taking advantage of the poor thing.