I’m sitting here – amusing the muse – in my new Levi’s 5 pocket jeans, feeling well-dressed and sassy because I achieved the basic female criteria for new clothes:

  1. unnamedthey look good
  2. they feel good
  3. I got a good deal
  4. my husband took me shopping and said, “Buy whatever you want.”
  5. I repeat, my husband suggested shopping and said, “Buy whatever you want.”

Larry and I recently trolled the Grant Boys Store in Newport Beach, an institution of sorts. The store had occupied a block of prime CA real estate for 60 years, likely a record on Newport’s streets of sun-drenched dreams, where a well-toned tan bests camo gear every sun-blessed day of the week. No sand, beach towels or suits on its racks, surf or Boogie Boards stocked by our ‘Boys’ in the city of the famed wave-breaking beach.

The store looked as if it could have fronted an Arkansas Main Street and specialized in guns sales, camping gear, and all manner of cowboy wear. It could have been in Montana or Michigan, too. An anachronism it was, a hallowed, born-to-be-dilapidated citadel of inland O. C. basics. Materials for sale were suitable for forested land or unending plains, not flat-as-a-pancake desert rimmed by ever-rolling waves.

But the store was closing – egads! As soon as the shock abated, we jumped into our car. As the radio played our music, gasp, another sad realization swelled: this business had actively sponsored the upstart local rock-and-roll radio station, saving the channel from the local Tammy Faye and Jim Baker clones, hellbent on forcing religion down people’s throats while teasing their wallets out of pockets…

The Grant Boys were local heroes, supporting ‘Guns and Roses’ rather than Radio Moses.

More shock inside the store… Although our shopping trip was not many days after the announcement, the entire shop was cleared of guns and associated gear: lock, stock, and barrel – shoot! Well, actually, we hadn’t gone for our guns, we’d gone for clothing, so each of us won.

Sigh to end of an era. The Grant Boys have become Grandpas and, like many of us, deserve to retire despite our collective laments.

What permissions are you granting yourself as you seek/research/live your retirement dreams?

What fits your hips and sings from your lips, girls and boys?

images-3

Meanwhile, Grandpa Grant has gone fishing.