He had the look; thank goodness it’s gone!

If a normal picture is worth a thousand words, this one will keep you talking for years.

Catherine insists I am embarrassing. Just wait til she wakes up and I show her THIS!!!

I’ll give you a minute to take it in.

Done? Good.

This is my husband, then my boyfriend, in the late 1980s, wearing what was then his favorite shirt. Those white stripes? They are mesh. His chest hair poked through. He thought it was like having built-in air conditioning.

Imagine, I married him anyway.

He didn’t always look like this when I met him. Most of the time, Basil was a really sharp dresser — almost always in a Brooks Brothers pinpoint oxford and snappy tie, a sharp suit and interesting dress socks. That was back when his work with the Postal Service was more customer facing and less about what was happening behind the scenes. These days, he dresses more for comfort and the inevitable dust and dirt he’ll encounter.

Anyway, as you can see, when off-duty, he dressed only for comfort and with an off-beat sense of style. I understand that in his teens and 20s, he rocked the polyester on a regular basis — bell bottom pants, shirts with big pointy collars and silkscreens of, say, the Empire State Building or Marilyn Monroe. And high-heeled shoes that sent one date into tears, begging him to trade them for more normal footwear. (Notice I haven’t mentioned the long hair and sideburns.)

Thank goodness for our age gap — I never encountered him that way in real life.

But we’ve talked about the shirt in this photo endlessly. I think I insisted it be incinerated when we got married, but it’s become a family legend, one that never fails to make Catherine laugh. Now I can show her proof — whenever she finally rolls out of bed.

I found this photo while looking for some others from family vacations of my youth for a different blog post I was planning. I will share those with you tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I give you this — a smile to start your Saturday.