Easter Parade

In just over a week, many Americans will dress in their finest spring attire, for Easter Sunday. This is an old tradition that has waned a bit in recent years. Not too long ago, displaying your Easter threads might land you, as Irving Berlin wrote, "in the rotogravure!"

As a kid I always knew, that I would receive some new clothes for Easter. I was never in an Easter Parade, but I can assure you, my parents had me attired well enough to have joined one.

Irving Berlin wrote the song in 1933. It has since been performed in multiple movies and Broadway musicals. Thinking about Berlin's song and Easter, makes me want to write my own "sonnet about your Easter bonnet."

We American's have taken the Easter Holiday in many new directions. The now famous Easter Bunny, and the Easter egg hunt, are part and parcel of our traditions.

Food types for Easter have become quite conventional as well. Many Americans will dust off their barbecue grills, as Easter has generally brought us weather warm enough for outdoor cooking.

The two most common non-barbecue meat selections are ham and mutton. Mutton is sort of a throwback to the origins of Easter, but it is not widely popular in the Midwest these days.

Deviled eggs can be found at just about every Easter dinner table. The practice of coloring Easter Eggs was once a must for many kids. Now you find mostly candy eggs at Easter parties.

All of these different fixtures of Easter were part of my childhood, but it was the clothing, that remains vivid in my memories. Therein lies my issue with the state of Easter today. There is no place in all of Nevada that a boy or a man, can now go to buy a good suit!

From my youthful days, all the way into early adulthood, Nevada provided us with several clothing stores that carried men's dress wear. When I refer to dress wear, I am including, suits, sport coats, slacks, overcoats, hats, gloves, and of course shirts.

My parents would buy me a suit on the average about every other year, when I was growing up. They generally tried to purchase it a bit too large, in hopes that it would last through two seasons. Those suits got a lot of wear. Most of us attended church services every Sunday, and were expected to wear a suit or sport coat, complete with a tie.

There was a large selection of clothing stores in the Nevada of my youth, but the three that my family frequented for men's and boy's dress apparel were, Shanks and Sterett, Coles, and Edmistons.

When you entered any of these stores, you would be met by friendly and expert salesmen. These men were familiar fixtures of our community, and were held in high regard.

If my father and I visited Shanks and Sterett, we would be shown a variety of suits by Ollie Braswell. He rarely had to have you try on more than a handful of jackets and slacks, as his experience was such that he seemed to know just what size would fit you correctly.

Most times we would have been satisfied with the choices Ollie had shown us, but that would never have appeased the women in our family. They would never let us finalize our selections, until we had visited the other two stores, and tried on their offerings. You men out there are quite familiar with this process even in 2014, right?

At Edmiston's, there were two more capable men's clothing representatives, Ernie Cowan and Paul Gollhofer. At Coles, their expert was Fred Sanders. I use the word expert freely and accurately. These men knew how to put you in the right style, fit, and color.

Each of these clothing stores offered a common service known as "alterations." Most of the slacks that accompanied suit coats came not "hemmed," or not cut to a regular length. Once you had decided upon the suit of choice, one of these men would carefully measure your inseam, so that it would fall upon your shoe tops at just the right height. Cuffs were added regularly, as that was the style in that era.

Generally the suit would be ready for pickup the next day. In those times payments for clothing at these stores included several options.

There were no credit cards available back then. Cash or checks were the most common reimbursement methods. Every store always had what we called "counter checks," if you did not have personalized ones.

If you needed more time to pay for the clothing, most of these businesses offered both "pay on account" and "lay away," plans. It was not uncommon for people to make regular weekly or monthly recompense, to these types of accounts.

When you left the store, your new suit was generally hung on a nice wooden hanger, complete with a garment bag that displayed the store's logo.

There were many more stores that catered to women's clothing. The Nevada Square and side streets offered a full range of choices. A new dress, shoes, hat, purse, and even gloves, were considered a must for the next day's Easter services.

New shoes were just as important for both women and men at Easter. These stores were again staffed by veteran salesmen. The personal touch of having them measure your foot before trying on shoes is still available today, at Davison Shoes.

You can still try on shoes on the Square, but heaven help you if you want to buy a suit. Getting personally fitted for a new suit worthy of an Easter Parade, cannot be discovered on the Internet, or at Wal-Mart. Sometimes new ways are more efficient and perhaps better, but not if you need a new custom suit to wear in the "Easter Parade!"