I’ve always been identified by my denims. Of course, when I was a kid in the Bronx, they were called Dungarees.

I first saw them in old black & white cowboy movies. In the movies, all the guys wore dungarees under their chaps, but in real life, they were only worn by those who mucked out stables, and so they gave dungarees a less than good name. My mother always made my brother and me wear both a belt and suspenders, just in case. Only cuffs were not allowed in our house because we were not to be confused with the other neighborhood kids.

In the movies they were rolled up at the bottoms with a mighty 2-inch cuff, but in the Bronx, a strict one-inch cuff was all that was allowed while in school. The teachers at P.S. 8 thought that dungarees were very low class, and Mrs. Levy had a ruler to measure the cuff at 1 inch and no more.

Then by the time of high school, James Dean and The Wild Ones were all over the movie screens with them on and they became known by all as “jeans”.

A few years later when I was in Greenwich Village, I wore jeans just like Jackson Pollack did, and not like the canvas carpenter’s pants that all of the Post Modern painters did. I was against that fad, and I was the rebel of Minetta Street!

My hair is gray now, and of course stretch denim has become my pal. Cuffs went out decades ago, but every once in a while, now living in Queens, I’m thinking of buying a pair, only just a little too long so that I could cuff them.

My, what would the neighbors say?