What Should We Wear Saturday Night?

With apologizes to my friend and our classmate, Lindsey Draper, who posed for this hilarious photo in our 1969 PANTHER Yearbook, the dress for Saturday evening is completely casual.

We may have worn dress shirts, ties and blazers (with the FRHS crest) during most of our days at Father Ryan, but we WILL NOT be nearly that formal or dressed up for our 40th Reunion party.

As I remember, we didn't start wearing our uniforms until November each year, and we went out of uniform in the last few weeks of school year, probably because it was so hot and much of the school was not air conditioned. That may also be why we didn't start into uniforms until the heat of the Fall subsided as well.

I think our class can take some credit for relaxing the uniform code a little bit while we were there. When we began as freshmen, we had to wear a black or navy blazer every school day with the school crest on the pocket. The dress shirts had to be blue or white (no pastels or pin stripes allowed). The slacks had to be dark, grey or navy in color usually (I don't think khaki pants were allowed).

But by the time we were seniors, working through the Student Council which was created while we were there, the uniform requirements were modified so we could also wear sweaters or a windbreaker with our ties as an alternative to blazers, and pastel colors for shirts were allowed along with some very tiny pinstripes. Even the color of the pants could be lighter (at least from looking that yearbook I see a few khaki-colored pants with our uniforms.

These were good changes, especially since most of us couldn't afford multiple blazers to wear. So they got pretty beat up looking and often really rank as the school year went on. An annual rite at the end of the school year was for some students to burn their blazers, they got so bad.

And so, with those nightmares back in the closet, what do we mean by casual for Saturday night? I would say sport shirts, golf shirts, khaki pants. But I am not the fashion police, so whatever you feel comfortable wearing is OK.

I am certainly not the fashion police for what the women should wear. That's getting way too close to that proverbial deadly question of "How do I look in this outfit?" and I refuse to go there. :) Besides, I found our ladies are very good at finding many appropriate ways to dress for parties and I suspect all of them will look better than the guys!

Getting back to Lindsey Draper, I understand he is Judge in Wisconsin these days. I sure hope he doesn't have any jurisdiction to come after me here in Tennessee if he doesn't like seeing the photo above. :)