Reid...furbelows and knickers

Are knickers superior to long pants? Reid presented his case during lunch at The Gourmet Shop on a rainy Friday: “If a cab sloshes mud on a man's trousers, he’ll need a new pair of pants. But if he's wearing knickers, he only has to change his socks." By knickers, of course, he does not mean ladies' undergarments. He means breeches, or as I prefer, breeks.

With his breeks, he usually sports tasseled garter flashes. These, he insists, should be called furbelows. “So that your socks don’t fall fur below your knees,” he says grinning. And I groan. Reid claims he started wearing breeks as a matter of practicality in the 1970s, when he criss-crossed the U.S. lecturing on college campuses. But I happen to know that he donned climbing knickers to scale the Matterhorn when he was a boy of 20.

Jacket from Scotland, breeks from Switzerland, "furbelows" from Spain, walking cane from the Ural Mountains.