From "M" The Civilized Man August 1987
I meet my first Straight Arrow in Chicago. We were working on the same 'account' team and he was running it. Not that he'd ever point that out. He was everything on that list up there - - even the Buick. Always a Buick. And he came from more money than God.
I never heard him utter a bad word about anyone except a co-worker who tried to steal an account of his. When she quit, the company threw a party...to celebrate her leaving. So she didn't really count. I sat next to him at a black tie event and noticed he was wearing a belt with a monogrammed Tiffany buckle. "Huh?" I thought. That's odd. No cummerbund. And then I realized he was wearing black trousers with belt loops. I later learned his tuxedo trousers had worn out years ago but the jacket was perfectly fine and for him - so was this arrangement. He pulled it off with an old-money panache that was all his own.
We traveled together often and I could not walk through an airport without him running into a cousin. Sometimes two. He was from a large Irish Catholic family and when a friend pointed out the North Shore house he grew up in... I remarked it looked like a private college in Vermont. You don't meet a lot of Straight Arrows in life. But it's something to aspire to. I may be getting old but that new Buick Lacrosse looks pretty damned good.
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