These Pants Saved My Life (Cont.)

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These Pants Saved My Life (Cont.)


	Tom Kluberton (Chris McPherson)

FISHERMAN JOHN FERRELL has a story that gives new meaning to the term "fashion emergency." A 50-year-old charter-fishing-boat captain from Anchor Point, Ferrell made national headlines several years ago after his 37-foot aluminum boat, the Irene, capsized dramatically in Cook Inlet, south of Anchorage. I track him down by phone from Talkeetna one evening after several folks tell me he is the ultimate protagonist in the definitive Carhartt narrative.

Ferrell had taken a party out fishing when the shaft connecting the Irene's engine and its transmission broke off, piercing the boat's hull and flipping it in turbulent 40- degree water. His six passengers and deckhand all clambered onto a four-person life raft. This left no space for the captain, who had to hang on to the hull of his overturned craft. The first Coast Guard helicopter on the scene pelted Ferrell with 110-knot rotor winds as it extracted the tourists from the life raft and flew away, leaving him to await the second rescue team.

The Carhartt survival yarn is a type of Freudian talking cure: a way to get over the aftershock by retelling your life-threatening experiences to others. "Sure, my arms gave out and turned to Silly Putty," says John Ferrell, "but the Carhartts protected my bottom half."

"I should have died, because I was out there for more than an hour, and generally you're a goner in 10 to 15 minutes," Ferrell recalls nonchalantly. "But I was wearing my double-knee Carhartts, which were so insulated the wind did not penetrate and I didn't get hypothermia. Sure, my arms gave out and turned to Silly Putty, but the Carhartts protected my bottom half, allowing me to keep afloat by moving my legs."

To hear him tell it—and he tells it often, since it's his best story—his boat anecdote is less about almost drowning than about clothing as miraculous as the Shroud of Turin. But behind the clothing trope, the Carhartt survival yarn is a type of Freudian talking cure: a way to get over the aftershock by retelling your life-threatening experiences to others.

"Bottom line, those pants saved my life," Ferrell says proudly. "I'm the Carhartt poster boy."

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