Maybe the clothes don't make the man

My journey to the dark side is now complete.

Last week I picked up two pair of dress pants from the catalog department of a local department store to replace two pair of worn-out Dockers I bought when I joined the law firm.

Now I have a week's worth of dress pants and just more than a week's worth of dress shirts hanging in my closet, a slow accumulation from purchases during the last 11 months.

I bought all this stuff because my boss thinks that you're more likely to produce professional work if you dress professionally. To that I say, pish tosh.

You see, we dress in business casual -- dress shirt, slacks, nicer shoes. No ties, no suit coats/blazers, though the lawyers are supposed to have those items handy in case they are going to meet a client. And on Fridays, we can wear jeans and athletic shoes.

I doubt you could demonstrate that productivity is less on Fridays than the rest of the week, and that if we do show a dip it's more related to the way we dress than it being Friday and we're ready for the weekend.

I'm doing the same kind of work as I did at the newspaper, where I dressed Friday casual all the time, and the boll weevil foundation, where the concept was that we dressed at the level of our clients, i.e., cotton farmers.

Curiously, whenever we were going to have a board meeting at the foundation, staff were expected to dress up -- you know, professionally. The board members, most of whom were cotton farmers, dressed like, well, cotton farmers.

If a state ag or USDA official was expected, then you'd see senior staff wearing ties, though the rest of us didn't have to follow suit because we'd be tucked away out of sight.

I never noticed any real change in efficiency or ability that came about because of a change of clothes. Of course, this isn't research, only anecdotal evidence.

But what constitutes professional dress? Plumbers don't wear suits and ties, and athletes don't wear jeans and work shirts. Clowns wear parodies of normal clothing. Doesn't make them any less professional.

I've known all sorts of workers who dress "professionally" according to whatever standard that is in their vocation who are incompetent, and workers who dress like bums who can work circles around their professionally clad co-workers.

Sure, for some people, dressing a certain way puts them in a frame of mind, but it's the frame of mind that counts, not the clothes. What's that saying about lipstick and pigs?

But the clothes are a requirement of the job, and they're comfortable enough. But when I come home, the lipstick comes off.

Mini-vacation diary, Part the tercero

Sunday. We have to go home today. I really like this lazing about, traveling hither and yon, seeing new things, learning new things.

Breakfast turns into an exercise experience for me. The elevator is small and induces claustrophobia, and we're only on the second floor, so I walk down to get some OJ, then back up to the room, where I realize we need some napkins. So, it's back down the stairs and up, and when I return to the room and realize I need something else. Down and up, one more time. Mercy.

We pack our belongings, turn in the card keys and jump in the Cube. First stop is downtown again so we can take some pictures because we forgot the camera the first night. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/moconn852/sets/72157626076456685/)

Then we hit the road, headed for Calvert, Texas, pop. 1208. When we stopped by on Friday to buy our tour guide, pretty much everyone we talked to either thanked us or welcomed us to Calvert, always using the town name. Like it was a chamber of commerce plot. But they seemed genuine enough.

The same happened on our return, but none of the people we'd seen on Friday seemed to remember us from the first stop. Probably had way too many folks stop by on Saturday to keep all the tourists straight.

Calvert was built by King Cotton and coal and is named after Robert Calvert, a descendant of Lord Baltimore. Residents were fond of the Victorian and Colonial revival styles. You'll see lots of columns and lots of color.

While wandering about taking pictures, I often walked downed the middle of the road with no fear of being run down by a car. The roads are a combination of paved and very well maintained dirt.

A local driving by stopped and roll her window down, introducing herself to us as Bette Gregory, a local realtor. She wondered if we might be interested in a house (several are for sale, including some with historical markers on them.) We said no, that we were just taking the tour, and she thanked us for coming to Calvert.

We spent hours driving and walking around town, Sharon reading from the tour guide, me shooting pictures.

Couple of interesting stories:

One house was originally built as a one-story cottage, and when a later owner decided to add a second story, he did it by having the original part lifted up and building the second story underneath. No details on how they pulled that off, but hey, we're not sure how the pyramids were built either.

In another part of town, the two houses occupying adjacent lots began as one house. The larger one had a wing that was later removed and moved over to become the home for the daughter of the first home's owner. It was later expanded.

None of the homes are open to the public except during the annual tour of homes in December.

After seeing all the houses we could stand to see, we set course for home with a couple of stops. One was outside Reagan to take pictures of the signs (for anyone reading this who doesn't know, Sharon's maiden name was Reagan). Another stop came to take a picture at a spot we found particularly photogenic.

And Lisa, the voice of the GPS? She didn't let us down again.

Mini-vacation diary, Part the segundo

The day starts early because the ROTC kids are up before 6, banging and thumpin around in the hall. What was that I said about they're not being too annoying?

Still, we laze about -- it is Saturday for heaven's sake. We'd bought some microwave breakfasts instead of partaking of the "continental" breakfast the hotel serves, so I cook. Silly me, I think I can grab some orange juice before we head out for the day, but by the time we're ready to go just before 9, the staff is cleaning up, and the juice has been stowed. I must remember that.

We jump in the Cube, set the GPS for Anderson and take Lisa's directions. From what I'd seen on Google maps, she's taking us by a circuitous route, but that turns out alright when we drive through a seriously ritzy neighborhood. I miss a turn, but it's not really Lisa's fault. She'll guide us straight to the entrance of the Fanthorp Inn State Historical Site in Anderson.

Seems Henry Fanthorp settled in Texas while it was still part of Mexico and persuaded Stephen F. Austin to give him some prime land on a major stagecoach route. His original dwelling was in a corn crib, but after he married, the wife, Rachel, decided she needed nicer quarters to live in.

So Henry built your basic dog-run, then expanded it by adding a second story and dining area to accommodate travelers. Eventually the establishment also became the post office, with Henry as postmaster. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/moconn852/sets/72157626072797979/)

While touring the site, we heard the park guide refer several times to "Washington," meaning Washington on the Brazos to me. Silly me, I didn't know the existing town is called Washington. You live and learn.

We checked a map in the car and discovered that WOTB wasn't far away, so we decided to buzz over and check it out. We programmed Lisa, who once again redeemed herself for Friday's miscues. (I did forget to mention that she tried to lead us astray in Bryan on our way back to the hotel, but we outsmarted her. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I buy a new GPS.)

As we neared the state park, we saw farmers sitting in their fields next to signs offering parking for $5. Why in the world would anyone want to park in their fields? Was something going on? Yep. Seems the park was having a 175th anniversary celebration of the declaration of Texas Independence. We turned into the entrance only to find we were about to join hundreds and hundreds of other visitors.

Guardsmen were on hand to direct traffic, and we were shuttled to an empty field way in the back of the park. But we didn't have to pay five bucks. And because it was a celebration, everything was free. No park admission, not other fees. Huzzah.

Historical re-enactors were scattered about the park grounds, doing demonstrations on just about anything you could imagine. Some demos we've seen previously in other museums and parks. One we hadn't seen was for rope making. The demonstrator invited children to run the hand-cranked apparatus and make 4 to 5 foot lengths of rope they were allowed to keep. That explained why we saw so many kids wandering about with rope.

A crowd had gathered at the replica Independence Hall to witness a re-enactment of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Only problem was that so many folks had crammed into the hall that the "delegates" couldn't get in. I skipped out.

Picked up a couple of interesting tidbits in the visitor center. Seems Anson Jones' life went a bit downhill after the glory days of Texas independence, and he ended up committing suicide. Somehow I missed that story in Texas history class. Ah, well.

The other bit of trivia explained that Tejanos were native born residents -- usually of Mexican or Spanish descent -- while Texians or Texicans were immigrants. You can insert your own undocumented worker comment here.

Jones' home has been moved to a section of the park called Barrington Farm, and functions as a living history center, with demonstrations all the time. We walked and walked until we just couldn't walk any more. With sore feet and achy backs we trekked to our car in the back 40 and gratefully headed for the hotel.

The junior soldiers were gone, and we took time to recover before dinner at McAlister's Deli -- like Jason's, only better. For fun we walked the mall, though there wasn't much to see, except for a couple of really interesting outfits on some teens. Though now I think about it, I don't remember them well enough to describe. Oh, well.

A stop at Starbuck for tea and desert topped off the night, and we retired, tired but happy.

Tomorrow we head back to Calvert, the town that's almost entirely a national historical site.

Mini-vacation diary, Part the primero

Day 1

GPS commercials would lead you to believe that the handy little instruments can deliver you anywhere you want to go.

The navigation aids have been quite a boon to me, a person who make the wrong turn just walking out of his closet. Over the years I've slowly learned not to argue with my GPS, even when I'm convinced it's wrong because I'm almost always the one who's really in error.

So, as we're taking Highway 6 from Waco to Bryan-College Station, I'm fairly confident that I have a straight shot. Imagine my dismay when Lisa (I think that's her name) tells me I have a turn coming. I glance at the map, and it indicates that I'll have to move onto a road to my left that doesn't exist.

We keep traveling and Lisa tells me I need to take the next left and go back to some county road, the sign for which we'd recently passed. I dutifully used the turnaround and returned to the county road, where it was painfully obvious that Lisa and the GPS map were woefully out of date and wrong, wrong, wrong.

We pulled back onto 6 and watched the map as we ran out of road -- or so it seemed -- and were driving across a field. Suddenly Hwy. 6 reappeared on the map, and the Cube icon fairly leaped from the field back to the road.

The purpose of this particular route was to take us to Calvert, which we intended to return to on Sunday, where the Internet had informed me I could by a self-guided driving tour booklet at "any merchant."

We parked "downtown" and proceeded to try to find a merchant who was open to sell us a book. This was more difficult than you'd think for early Friday afternoon. We found a store with a quite friendly owner who gave us a rack card with a map of the historical district and who assured us that was what we were looking for.

The Internet had also informed me that Calvert had a Chamber of Commerce, so we thought we might have better luck going there. Fortunately its location was marked on the rack card so we headed that direction. We soon encountered a second shop owner standing on the sidewalk who quite amiably struck up a conversation. We told him we were going to the chamber office, and he told us not to bother. The chamber had a building, but no one was ever there, he said.

We mentioned that we intended to return to see the historical houses, and he lead us into his shop so he could show us the very booklet the Internet said existed. Unfortunately, he only had the one copy. Did he know where we might obtain one? Why, hmm. Probably if we went back the other way, one particular store would probably be open, and if anyone in town had one, that shop owner would.

Sure enough, when we arrived at the store, the wizened owner was in possession of a number of copies, which she happily sold for $7.50 -- please note that the Internet said the booklets cost $5. Ah, nice to know that even in small-town America, profiteering is alive and well. Supply and demand at work.

Having purchased our precious guide -- which will now be part of my estate, to be handed down to my children, with many hopes they won't fight over it -- we proceeded to Bryan. After we checked in, we decided to visit historical downtown Bryan.

The area is being renovated, probably as a result of a grant, with quite a bit being complete. During our wanderings we find O'Connor and Associates, a law firm whose primary attorney is apparently a fellow named Michael O'Connor (I'll post a picture on Flickr soon.)

We spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering about and left just as the post-work traffic seemed to be picking up. Despite the presence of numerous restaurants, we decide to eat at a chain place across from the hotel -- and no, it wasn't a Denny's.

When we returned, we discovered that a large Jr. ROTC group was sharing our accommodations. They thumped an bumped a bit, and took over the breakfast area for a pizza feast, but they weren't really as annoying as they could have been.

Saturday we'll head to Anderson and wind up on a much bigger adventure.

I hope to post Day 2 on the morrow.