I didn’t get into this business to hurt people.
But when something this sleazy happens, I can’t keep quiet.
We have in no uncertain terms exposed a scam in the Underwear Underworld. What was thought to be an all-American, 100-percent downy cotton world is instead a dirty, shameful operation built on deception and run by cigar-smoking big guys who wheel and deal from the back rooms of slum shanties.
In their boxer shorts.
It began innocently. I was working the day shift and had called Jockey International Inc. in Kenosha, Wis., to talk with a person named Mildred. Recently, after opening a package of six new pair of briefs and seeing the same tag on each one — “INSPECTED BY MILDRED 147 19” — I wanted to thank Mildred personally for her fine job of inspecting. Each pair she’d inspected seemed flawless. (Of course, we’re talking about pre-wear condition here.)
But I immediately got the feeling something was awry. Jockey folk seemed hesitant. They treated me like some guy who wears bikini briefs, exclusively.
I felt as if I were getting in deeper, maybe putting myself in danger of going underwearless the rest of my days. I knew I was in harm’s way.
But I pressed on.
Finally, after repeated calls and several seedy conversations, the Underwear People cracked. My worst fears were realized:
Mildred the Underwear Person Inspector isn’t a person. Not even close. “Mildred” is a conglomerate, a manufacturing plant in Milan, Ga. (I was told the Milan plant manager was, and I quote, “out of the country for a while.” Now, I understand why.)
That information was only the tip of the iceberg. CAROL, who inspected my T-shirts, is a Jockey plant in Carlisle, Ky.
“Coded names,” said Tim Brown, plant manager of CAROL/Carlisle.
Three Kentucky-based Jockey plants combine to make up a sort of Bermuda (shorts) Triangle of underwear in the state’s northeast corner: CYNTHIA is in Cynthiana, MARY is the plant in Mayville, and MARY SUE is the plant in Mt. Sterling.
And there you have it.
No one in our newsroom wanted to believe these cold, startling facts — except for the reporters who don’t wear underwear, and they could not possibly have cared less. There were so many questions we wanted to ask Mildred, like what she looked for, flaw-wise, in underdrawers. Did she put them through a crash test? Ask them if they’d ever been part of a Commie faction? See if they could do 10 chin-ups?
We wanted to ask her what would happen if underwear failed inspection on her watch. Were the faulty underwear made to run laps or pull KP? Were they sentenced to be worn by furniture movers named Goat or Harry? Blindfolded by tiny strips of other bad underwear and, with their little cotton arms tied behind their rears, shot?
Most of all, I wanted the comfort that I was sure would have come with personally knowing my underwear inspector.
Didn’t happen.
The Carlisle plant manager’s assurance that every garment was inspected by three different people at three different times was little consolation. That means only that instead of being inspected by a nice person named Mildred, a grandmother who attends Sunday school and maybe even tithes, the underwear I have on may have been fondled by Lolita or Zsa Zsa.
Or worse, by a guy named Biff.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu