Old School, Tom-Style

Like most of the country, Morgantown has had its fair share of cold weather this winter, and more than its share of snow. It's been hat and gloves and scarf and boots weather for months on end, it seems.

Here I am in my Old School get-up.

And I'm out in it almost every day: I have a regular morning routine, in which I head into town across the High Street bridge, stop in at the post office and ship out anything that might have sold, stop at the bank once in a while, and then head into the Blue Moose, where I like to do a little writing.  The Moose, as I call it, is a kind of local watering hole (I think I can call it that, since they do serve beer, including in the morning), but I always stick to a cup of coffee and a danish.

When I leave the Moose, I usually come back over the Pleasant Street bridge, and one day a couple of weeks I go I had one of those encounters that I seem to have here in Morgantown now and then. As I was stepping off the bridge, with my hat and gloves and computer bag, some guy called out to me from across the street. He had a duffel or a piece of luggage, and he seemed to want directions: "Hey, Old School," he said, "can you tell me how to get downtown?"

Well, I told him to just go on across the bridge and he'd practically be there, but I'm afraid I felt like I'd just been tagged with a new nickname, even if it was only in my own mind. It's going to be hard to get rid of, even so.