The Young Snake Wrangler

All summer long I watched from my deck a grandma with her three grandchildren strolling by to the pond nearby. The little girl picked flowers, the baby usually slept in his stroller, and the young boy waded fearlessly in the shallow end of the pond with rubber boots on. I waved at them every time we saw each other but we never met.

Once she told me from afar that her oldest grandson loves snakes. I was about to tell them that there were plenty of snakes in and around the pond and to be careful, but I figured that they already knew that.  There are thousands of snakes per square mile in Virginia.

The young boy with blond curls was not interested in the turtles, the bull frogs, the tree climbing nutria, the resident beaver family, the miniature ducks, the Canada geese, the blue heron, the two foxes, the deer, the rabbits, and many other creatures that showed up daily from the forest, just the snakes.

I wanted to meet this young wrangler, but they were always too fast for me, disappearing in the forest nearby once he was done with the pond. He quickly found the exact corner with the huge den of snakes and the den under a big pile of rocks on the right bank; nobody had any idea how the pile of rocks got there. They always seemed out of place.

Today I finally met the young snake wrangler at the pool. His grandmother introduced herself and her three grandchildren. His name is Gabriel and is 9 years old. What makes his passion so different is the fact that Gabriel is color blind, and he cannot distinguish snakes by colors, just shape of pattern and shape of the head. He catches and releases the snakes as his enthusiasm is to study them and handle them, not to collect them or dispose of them.

I asked him how he came about to like snakes so much. Gabriel (Gabe) has an uncle who catches snakes for a living, disposing of unwanted residents in peoples’ yards, sheds, pools, and homes in Prince William County. His uncle’s job turned into a fascination for young Gabriel. As the consummate professional, Gabe carries a snake catcher’s grabber hook.

Blue Jeans as Commodity Money

One day my body stopped having so much metabolism and the pairs of blue jeans I owned, mostly indigo blue made of stretchy cotton for extra luxury, stopped fitting me comfortably. It was high time to donate them to someone who could wear them and enjoy them. Long gone were the days of the 26-inch waist.

My first pair of jeans I owned in the U.S. bore the Wrangler label and were relatively cheap, twenty dollars. On the black market, people living under impoverished communism had to pay $150 for the same pair if they wanted to own it, or exchange it for other goods and services. The proletariat were all poor working people, making around 800 lei per month, which translated into $67, at the pegged exchange rate imposed by the Communist Party of 12 lei to a dollar.

The decision was not hard to make, it was more important to survive and use a pair of jeans worth $150 as commodity money than to actually wear it. Besides, western wear was considered decadent and frowned upon.

If one owned a pair of jeans, that person was either a member of the Communist Party and thus able to buy goods cheaper or in foreign currency, deriving extra income from bribes from one’s position in government; from the confiscation of goods from black marketers arrested; as a security police informer who received extra income from snitching on neighbors and relatives; or as a black marketer who bought and sold foreign goods, donated or purchased from traveling foreigners.

Since blue jeans were bought and sold on the black market and often traded for other foreign goods and/or domestic services such as medical care and pharmaceuticals, one could argue that blue jeans were a strong commodity money in communist regimes. They were almost as valuable as a cassette player.

Using jeans as commodity money was not something new, people traded goods and services in many countries. In times of war and economic depression, people used cigarettes, chocolate, nylons, soap, tobacco, pelts, shampoo, bullets, medicine, and other goods in shorts supply as commodity money.

At the time the Wrangler jeans cost $20, the minimum wage in the U.S. was $3.10 per hour. That was hardly enough to pay bills and still have money left to cover other costs, including clothes. The blue jeans would have cost a day’s work.

My friends at the time, Joan and Gail, had gifted me on my birthday my first pair of real American blue jeans, Wrangler, made in the good ole U.S.A., not in China. They were simple, durable, simple, and affordable.  But they were so much more. They represented the quintessential American spirit of freedom, of exploration and adventure, as well as the work ethic and resilience in the American west tamed by good ole cowboys and other immigrants who came to America to settle in the land with so many possibilities. The jeans became the workhorse of the west in the new America because they could last so long.

Levi’s were the original miner’s brown pants reinforced with rivets. A miner’s wife in Reno, Nevada, asked tailor Jacob Davis in 1871 to make pants that would withstand the tears of pockets and button fly and he came up with the rivets. Local miners wore overalls made of a canvas material called “duck cloth,” in light brown. Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss, a German immigrant who owned a dry-goods store in San Francisco, applied for and received a patent for pants reinforced with rivets. 

I am sure, a pair of Levi jeans would have been more expensive back in the day when my first pair of Wrangler jeans was purchased. Sometimes I wish that I still had that first pair of jeans. I lost it in the many moves and clothes donations I have made since then.

The original Blue Bell brand was sewn and manufactured for men but, when the company became Wrangler in 1960, women were eventually included in the manufacturing process. To this day, cowboys and farmers prefer the Wrangler brand.

The truth is that foreigners, when they think of America, they think of blue jeans and cowboys with big felt hats riding into the sunset on their horses or driving their Mustangs onto the wide open roads. It is not that they want to be cowboys, they envy the free spirit and the ability to go anywhere at the drop of a hat, to ride into endless possibilities and dreams.

 

Blue Jeans

When my future fiancé asked me what I wanted for my 18^th birthday, I did not hesitate - a pair of American made blue jeans.

I was watching John Wayne westerns to improve my English skills and the cowboys, at least the celluloid ones from Hollywood, sported well-worn and seemingly indestructible Levis covered with chaps.

Blue jeans had become a status symbol of sorts in the poor Iron Curtain countries. It was not for the same reason Americans loved clothing fads – to prove that they were rich, trendy, and fashionable. We liked jeans because they represented freedom, exploration, and the ability to cross unchartered borders and territories. Jeans epitomized a physical freedom that we longed to have but were only allowed in spirit because, to our communist rulers, everything western was decadent and dangerously capitalist. Profit and capitalism were dirty words.

To make durable capitalist jeans inaccessible to the masses, no importation was endorsed. Black market dealers made huge profits by selling cheap knock-off denim pants smuggled into the country from Turkey and sold for $150 a pair back in 1977! Most people earned $70-80 a month, including specialized doctors. Stories were told of foreign visitors, approached by locals in the street, wanting to purchase the jeans they were wearing.

I was so excited that I would finally own a pair of denim pants, but not just any pair, blue jeans made in America, indigo blue denim with rivets, snaps, a metal zipper, and the famous Levi leather patch.

My birthday present arrived two weeks late. As usual under communism, the package was received at the post office downtown and the security police inspected its contents before I was allowed to pick it up. It took an hour to walk downtown but I did not mind this time. They opened the box and, to my surprise, it contained a vest and a matching skirt made of blue dyed soft material with a denim-like pattern. My elation deflated like a huge balloon.

My fiancé’s mother, Thelma Jean, a very caring and proper southern lady, thought blue jeans to be an inelegant 18^th birthday gift for a young lady and took it upon herself to find material, a suitable pattern at Hancock Fabrics, and an enterprising seamstress willing to sew, subject-unseen, the matching vest and skirt in record time for $10. I knew the price because “rotten capitalists” had to declare the value of any gift package sent to communist citizens. The commies then assessed 40 percent custom duties. After a thorough examination of the contents to make sure that there were no subversive materials hidden, I took possession of my package and paid the equivalent $4, exchanged times 12 into the pegged Romanian currency, the worthless “leu.”

There is a very good reason why I cringe every time the TSA goons rifle through my belongings at the airport and frisk me. We were subjected to many unwanted bodily and purse checks during my almost twenty years of life under communism, including upon exiting department stores. It was always assumed that we were criminals engaged in stealing from the oppressing government that was actually robbing the country blind.

Always grateful for my gift, I took pictures with the unusual outfit on, sent it to my future mother-in-law and wore it a few times before it faded. My heart was still longing for a real pair of jeans.

On my 21^st birthday, very pregnant with my first daughter, I went shopping with my friend June D. She was buying clothes in an old fashioned mom and pop store in our small southern town. I had told her the story of my 18^th birthday blue jeans that remained just a dream. It must have struck a chord with her. When we finished, she dropped me off to my home and handed me a beautifully wrapped box. Inside was a brand new pair of indigo blue Wrangler jeans. I was very pregnant and unable to wear them yet but I was jumping with joy, on the inside. The price tag was mistakenly left inside: $20.

Every year since that time, I never forget to pay it forward. I have given away my expertise, translation services, food, toys, books, shoes, and clothes, especially blue jeans, to other legal immigrants like me. In my mind, jeans were the quintessential expression of the American pioneer spirit and of boundless personal freedom.