So, last weekend I took a little road trip to visit a friend in South Carolina near the Georgia border. I planned to get a head start Friday after work. My benevolent boss let me leave much earlier than I had planned (in fact, if I had not scheduled lunch with colleagues, he would have sent me on my way after our morning coffee), and in my new haste to make tracks, I was a little careless in executing my plan for preparing to leave.

I did not get very far south of Cincinnati before I realized that I forgot to pick up from the cleaners the shirt I had planned to wear to church on Sunday with my Tewksbury MacGillivray. So, I had my GPS system I call “Amber” locate a mall in Lexington where I might buy a substitute. One lost hour and $45 later, I was back on the road.

I spent the night near Knoxville. The next morning, somewhere on I-40 amid some of the most beautiful landscape there is to be seen, while running through a mental checklist of how to dress in a kilt, I realized that I also forgot my sporran!

This was a much bigger deal. Now, a shirt you can find almost everywhere, but a sporran? Ah, but I’m on my way to South Carolina, I remind myself. Between here and there, already I can think of three possible sources: surely Asheville has a kilt shop; if not, Matt Newsome’s place is sort of on the way; as a last resort, the town I was going to has a Scottish import store in their provincial yet somehow high-brow downtown. This, I decide, is my opportunity to buy a better sporran, and I will just have to bite the bullet and splurge a little.

I have Amber direct me to Asheville. Sure enough, there is a kilt shop! The volunteer at the visitor’s center did not know its name, but she was able to provide me with a freshly highlighted map.

En route, I pass a pair of bleary-eyed late-twenty-something lasses, looking as though they might still be recovering from a little too much partying the night before. They regard my UK, and one purred loudly, “I love a man in a kilt!” Just as cheerfully, I let her know I shared her enthusiasm, and left them both looking a little more bewildered than before.

Just a few steps away, I find a cramped little kilt shop open for business. Inside it is cluttered with racks of ties, tartans and tweeds and other what-not, but not a sporran in sight. A sales matron (“Full Scottish,” she declared, “but born and raised here.”) is helping a lady try on jackets but she does not acknowledge me for a good ten minutes or so, until the lady’s gentleman companion says something like, “I’d love to get a kilt, but with a name like Petrillo, I think lightning would strike me dead.”

At this I interject, “Of course you can wear a kilt. You don’t have to be Scottish to wear a kilt. There are plenty of district and commemorative tartans that could adopt if you liked.” I didn’t think it was really necessary at this point to draw more attention to my Utilikilt, so I skipped the obvious. Appearing peeved, the sales matron finally turns to me and asks if she can help. I tell her I am looking for sporrans, perhaps one with a silver cantle. She shows me two, but I find neither the designs nor their prices to be all that attractive. I downgrade my expectations.

Back at the car, I consult with Amber on plan B, but a trip to the Tartan Museum looks to be at least a three hour detour from my itinerary, not counting shopping, visiting, and looking at Matt’s collections.

I call my friend to ask the name of the shop in his town, and Amber provides the number. It turns out that they have quite the supply, and the clerk on the phone describes them to me. I check the hours of operation, and promise to stop in later in the day to check them out.

And so I do. I reject the Rob Roy, since it’s too much like the one I forgot, and it’s not a semi-dress sporran besides. There’s a slightly dressier one in all black with some Celtic leatherwork and metal tassels, $170. There’s another exactly like it, except it has a short-hair hide front. I say I’ll take it. But the bill comes to $270. Oops. Forgot to check the price difference between an all-leather model and one with fur. Whatever. I’ll deal with it when I pay next month’s bills. All I really care about is that I finally have a complete ensemble to wear to church.

Last Sunday was “World Communion Sunday.” My friend was a guest percussionist for the service at the Presbyterian church, so it seemed that I fit right in. To relate this to the other thread on kilts in church, I have to say that my kilt was no distraction during the service, but my singing was. I accepted many compliments for both after the service, however.

So, today I finally got around to putting away some of the things from my trip. I see the box my sporran came in has a label on it: Made in Nova Scotia. Turns out the fur is…
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quite…
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possibly…
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illegal!






Regards, Rex,
Outlaw in Cincinnati.