The picture above explains why you wear work gloves. I wrote a blog post about the incident, but here is a condensed version. On the day in question, I was pulling on a very large nut with an adjustable wrench. It was holding a pulley on my riding lawn mower. One of the last thoughts I recall, before I skinned a knuckle to the bone and hurt another was, “Hey Buck, don’t you think you need to put on those high dollar work gloves you paid for?” Of course my answer to myself was, “I’ll go get ’em in a minute.”

Work gloves. We all need a pair. I work in food service, when not stumbling around my five acres cutting myself in various ways. When working in food service, it is not a good idea to have hands covered with cuts, scrapes and stains; so when working with wood, paint or other things like that, gloves are a good idea bordering on a necessity.

Me? I like leather gloves. So now I should give you a practical reason for that, right? There is none. I like leather gloves because they look, smell and feel like leather. That is a tactile sensation that dates back to my days on Grandpa’s farm.

My last two pair of work gloves were made by Kinco, and were made from buffalo leather. I have the second of those two pair sitting here beside me. This pair lasted me about three years, the first pair, almost two. This pair lasted longer because I was really reluctant to give them up.

That spot on the back of the left one? Its my blood from putting up fencing. The gloves protected my hands and fingers, but not my forearms. The right glove’s finger seams are wearing out and have split on the middle and third finger. There is a hole worn in the middle finger of the right hand. All over the palms and fingers of both gloves ,you can feel the leather worn thin and supple. The right thumb has a small hole from some incident now forgotten. The list of scrapes, broken laces, and worn thin spots would take up pages. So why want to keep them? Why put off buying a new pair?

Because they fit me like a glove. Anything leather; a coat, a hat, a boot, a glove, that begins near the correct fit seems to adapt to the body with time. I wear a medium glove, but my hands are different sizes, and my already unique hands have been modified by time and damage. With time, sweat, use and blood, leather gloves become a part of your hands. They no longer just fit; they fit like a glove.

Before I bought my “dress boots” some six years ago, I had worn a pair of boots for untold years. The soles and heels were all but gone, and the uppers were wearing through in places. When I checked on a re-sole and heel job, it was going to cost nearly as much as buying a new pair of boots. So I bought these boots. After six years they are beginning to break in.

These gloves? They have not only protected my hands, they have become part of my memories. A lot of the story of my last couple years are sweated into them. So no, I will not throw them away right now. I will put them in my stuff drawer where I can find them, accidentally, every once in a while.

Maybe, after a couple of years I can write a follow-up to this post about this pair.

Ed