I walked into my local thrift store one day and found a pair of chaps. I was quite sure it's genuine leather, I don't know much about leather but it didn't feel like that tacky plastic wrap upholstery we've come to know. It was tough, textured, you could feel death upon it. This came from a living breathing animal. Someone killed the beast with their own hands, skinned it, tanned it, said "I would like some chaps," and made some chaps. It was worn to hell and back, from who the hell knows where–let's say Wyoming–Wyoming to suburban West Chester, Pennsylvania. Leather so tough it's traveled through time, gone through an industrial revolution, two World Wars, saw the twin towers come up and down, and now witnessing my iPhone as I flash a picture of it, and post it to my Instagram story with the word "Buy?" over it. Now these chaps can travel through cyberspace.

 

Whose were these? I'm imagining some 60 year old man, his wife telling him to get rid of all his junk. He has dusty boxes full of The Lone Ranger VHS tapes and pop guns from childhood. He probably bought the chaps from a flea market when he was in his 20s with a fresh hot paycheck burning a hole in his pocket. 

How far back do these go? How far back through thrift stores and flea markets and garage sales and musty basements and decrepit attics until the chaps are on an actual ranch? 

 

These must have been worn by a real cowboy. Genuine leather holds scents; scents that'll make your wife nag your ear off until you drop them into a donation bin. I think I can smell manure on these. Underneath the overtones of mildew and mothballs and asbestos you can even smell the sour scent of hard earned sweat.  The kind that you work up after wrangling longhorns through a cattle drive towards up north and being clawed at by the thorny low brush. All the elements against you and your chaps. 

 

But all the old cowboys have died by now. This one probably hung his chaps up one last time hoping maybe his son would put some more wear into it, then maybe his son too. Leather so tough, out living each cowboy.

 

But then no one needed chaps anymore. Don't need any more clutter in the house. Sell it on the front lawn, see what idiot buys it.