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jT Oiono Weekly Times, Wednesday! December 5, 2001 - II The students of Kirby Centennial Public School performed their spirited carols on the Orono Town Hall steps last Friday as part pf the Orono Business Improvement Associatioifs Lighting of the Lights event. BASIC BLACK It's all in the jeans Arthur Black Chance is a wonderful thing. Suppose, for instance, Morris Strauss, a bearded and nearly broke immigrant from Bavaria had not been walking down that street in San Francisco back in 1850. Suppose he hadn't run into a crusty old gold miner who asked him what he'd brought with him from back east. "A few yards of canvas" Strauss replied. The miner scoffed and pointed to his own ripped and shredded trousers. "You'da been better off in you'd brought a few pairs of hard-wearin' pants." Pants, eh? Thought Strauss. He took some of his canvas to a tailor and paid him to make a pair of pants out of it. Then he took the pants back and sold them to the miner. The miner was ecstatic. Finally, a pair of pants that could stand up to the rigors of hard rock mining. He became a walking billboard for Strauss' sartorial ingenuity. Pretty soon, other miners came looking for durable trousers. Mister Strauss had found his personal gold mine, but he needed a name for his popular product. He decided to use his middle middle fiame: Levi. And he made a couple of changes. First he switched from canvas canvas to a softer but still durable French textile that came from . the French town of de Mimes and was finished in Genoa, Italy. Then he dyed it dark blue because it hid dirt and stains better. He also introduced three new. words to the English language: language: levis, denim (from the French serge de Mimes) and jeans, a corruption of Genoese. It's been a long and winding century- and a half for Levis siftce then. For most of that time Levis were pants for the working stiff - cowboys, miners, miners, farmers. Then, a transformation. transformation. "Jeans" suddenly became chic. Everybody from Bob Dylan to Princess Anne was photographed in jeans. Today jeans are a clothing phenomenon -- they're class unconscious. They're worn by blue collar workers and university professors; professors; by cowboys and bank tellers. The makers of Levis have evolved too. 1 Customers of LVC (that's Levi's Vintage Clothing) buy personalized history prewashed into each and every pair of pants. Perhaps you'd like a pair of Dead Man's Jeans, a replica of a pair that a man wore when he was dragged behind a pickup back in the '30's. Or a pair of 'Kerouacs' - replicated stain for stain from a pair worn by the author of "On The Road". But it will cost you. In Tokyo, one pair of Levi's 501 Signature series will set you back somewhere between $1,000 and $20,000 US. That is not a misprint. I guess that would have to a back-handed tribute to the durability of old Morris Strauss' original brainwave back in 1850. Speaking of durable, diefyou hear about the guy in Nevada, excavating his back yard who dug up a pair of mud-crusted but still recognizable recognizable Levi's? Experts authenticated authenticated the pants as having been made circa 1880 - the oldest known pair of Levi's in the world. You can buy 'em yourself on e-Bay if you hurry. Guy's only asking'$25,000 US. And what did the ancient pantaloons cost whep they were first sold back in the 1880's? A dollar seventy-five. You know that somewhere the ghost of Morris Levi Strauss is shaking its head. SUBSCRIBE TO THE ORONO WEEKLY TIMES for only $30.00 a year.