These Pants Saved My Life (Cont.)

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These Pants Saved My Life (Cont.)


	Ball glitterati Kenny Umphenour and Cliff Hudson talking pants in between swigs (Chris McPherson)

"WHERE IS OUR Carhartt machete holster, honey?" computer consultant Tom Kluberton asks his girlfriend, Hobbs Butler. At the moment, Butler, a fresh-faced, red-haired 32-year-old, is too busy to help. She's occupied talking about the homemade brown Carhartt tool belt—recycled out of worn-out pants—that she is modeling for me over a pair of newish Carhartt blue jeans.

"Other people wear through the knees first; I wear through the seat," she tells me. "Then I save the waistband and the back pockets. Turn them around and you get a great tool belt you can hang a hammer on and keep nails in."

I've dropped in on Kluberton and Butler at their 1940s hunting lodge, over near Talkeetna's railroad tracks, because I heard in town that they were a repository of rescue-pants epics—not only because they have spent most of the last decade outside, rebuilding their house from the foundation up, but also because they own 12 antic sled dogs.

"Day to day, these pants will last a lifetime in someplace like Oklahoma," Kluberton says. "Up here, getting pawed, clawed, and chewed by sled dogs all day long, or being dragged along behind them through thorny devil's claw when you fall off the sled, you might get a year's wear out of them." He looks down at his raggedy, paint-stained trousers, which are five months old but could pass for antique. Kluberton, 50, is tall and loping, with a boyish face and a thick mane of graying hair. He gives me a fast-paced tour of the grounds, breezing past a retaining wall constructed by "the Sherpa that our Everest-guide neighbor, Todd Burleson, sent over to help.

"Twice now, I've had a chainsaw swing up and catch me on the leg," Kluberton continues. "That's why you wear the double-knee pants—so the chainsaw cuts off a good,

"I dropped the lighter in my lap, and kept driving until I noticed that I was feeling a bit warm. I looked down to find my crotch on fire." Tom Kluberton holds up the gutted pants as evidence. "Ok, they're crotchless, but they're still good Carhartts."

long slice of your Carhartts, instead of a good, long slice of your leg. Even so, you hate to lose a pair of Carhartts. What I do is get high-temperature automotive silicon gasket sealer and glue the pants back together." When I point out that silicon gasket sealer is neon orange, he offers a more color-coordinated alternative: "You can also use duct tape as a temporary fix."

Kluberton shows me other pairs of archival trousers he has not repaired, because they serve as badges of honor. Like the pair with the black-rimmed burnt-out crotch—the pants that illustrate a kind of infallibility principle.

"What happened was, while I was driving out of the Costco parking lot in Anchorage, I was futzing with this new minitorch—the kind that will flame a cigar from 11 inches away—which I bought to melt the ice that builds up overnight in my ignition. I dropped the torch in my lap, and kept driving until I noticed I was feeling a bit warm. I looked down to find my crotch on fire." Kluberton holds up the gutted pants as evidence.

"The family jewels were at risk," he says. "If I'd been wearing any other kind of pants, I'd have been dead or dying, in trouble, flambé even. Instead, I pulled over to the side of the road, put myself out, and turned the lighter off. OK, they're crotchless, but they're still good Carhartts. You can wear them as long as you've got boxers on underneath."

Kluberton goes into a bedroom to change into "the pants that survived auto-da-fé" to prove it. He is right. His crotchless Carhartts don't look so bad—if you like chaps.

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