A Beautiful New Suit

During the 1950's, I was stationed on top of a mountain in Germany's Schnee Eiffel.  Because we experienced lots of snowy conditions,  the Air Force allowed us lots of spare time for travel to less cold places.

Once, I traveled with some "buddies" to London, a marvelous place. While walking through town, I saw a window sign, offering "Made to Measure" suits, for what seemed to be to me to be "ridiculously" low-priced.  Having always wanted such a suit, I immediately gave the proprietor the requested amount of money.

I was shown lots of suit material and I picked some that had a brown check.  Kind of "loud" but I liked it.  I then was subjected to a half-hour of careful measuring.  At the end, I was told that I could pick up the finished product in two weeks.(Another fun trip to London. I could hardly wait!)

When I got my hands on my new suit, I thought that it was the most beautiful  piece of clothing I had ever seen, or could ever hope to own.

Back in Germany, I proudly showed my suit to my buddies and hung it on a wall hook so that I could look at it and admire it often during the day. 

Later that week, the small mountain town of Pruem was taking advantage of an unusual warm spell and was holding a carnival.  My buddies and I attended.  I thought that it might be a good place to show off my new beautiful suit.

At the carnival, acting like stupid Americans, we drank a lot of German beer and made fools of ourselves.  Apparently, I drank the most beer and was so drunk and obnoxious that my buddies decided they didn't want me with them for a while.

One of the carnival "rides" was a large drum that revolved heavily and pinned you to its edges for a period of time. Great fun if you are sober.

To get rid of me for a while, they paid the ride operator to keep me spinning until they came back to take me home (a rather long time apparently.)

The next morning I woke up in my cot, still in my suit.  However, when I took a good look at my covering, I saw that wherever the swirling drum had contact with it, there were tatters and holes, especially in the buttocks area of my no longer beautiful new suit.  Ah, yes, lots of lessons were learned from this experience!

....................................