Free Press: The Official Bills Khakis Newsletter

This African's Khaki

-Douglas Rogers

THE first American I ever met was a giant of a man named Theodore Monroe. The year was 1975, I was a puny seven-year-old Rhodesian farm boy with jug ears and tiny shorts, and my father and uncle had agreed to let me tag along with them on a weekend hunting trip in western Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe, the country where I was born and raised.

My uncle was a big game hunter and an officer in the Rhodesian army, and I was in awe of him. He had legs the size of tree trunks, the barrel chest of a rugby forward, and the gruff, brusque manner Rhodesian men seemed to require to survive in that rugged, remote, war-torn corner of Africa. I was in awe of my uncle. But then I met Monroe.

I remember, clear as yesterday, this enormous man loping up the driveway of my uncle’s stone farmhouse as we packed the Land Rover to get ready for the trip. He was about 6’6”, square jawed, with flinty blue eyes, and cropped sandy-brown hair. He walked military straight, but not stiffly, and when he spoke it was in a languid drawl that suggested he didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. I recall my mother and aunt fluttering their eyes at him when he smiled and said “Mornin’ ladies.” To me he looked like he’d stepped off the giant screen of the drive-in cinema my parents would take my sisters and me to once a month in our home town, Umtali – Hollywood movies being the only indication to me at the time that Americans existed.

Most of all, though, I remember Monroe’s clothes. Understand that back in the 1970s any self-respecting Rhodesian male wore a uniform, and it was made of khaki: short-sleeved khaki shirts, tight fitting khaki shorts, knee-length khaki socks, and flat-soled bush shoes called veldskoens – pumps made of cow hide, the color of khaki. We wore the khaki uniform day and night, winter and summer, at school and at work, and it seemed to have two defining characteristics. First, those shorts had to be skin tight. It was as if the Rhodesian male could only prove his masculinity by threatening to burst the seams of his pants. Second, the khaki had to be hard and uncomfortable. Rhodesia was farm country, and cotton grew like a weed, but for some reason our khaki was made of scratchy synthetics. From age seven I hated that uniform, and I hated khaki.

Monroe didn’t wear a uniform. Or, rather, he wore a uniform all his own. He had on a cool, long-sleeved white cotton shirt, perfectly-ironed loose fitting trousers, and thick soled polished leather hunting boots. Amazingly, his trousers were khaki, too, but it wasn’t the kind of khaki we had on. His appeared be fashioned from the rarest of fine cottons, and they gave off the cool air of leather, aftershave, and the hint of a good club. I started at him in wonder. It was the first time in my life I thought a man could actually have a ‘look’ and it was certainly the first time I realized khaki could be stylish.

I’m not sure how my uncle knew Monroe – probably from the army – but he came with us on the trip. I recall he didn’t speak much, mostly only to ask questions, as if he was far more interested in us than we could be in him. I do recall though that he spoke approvingly of the landscape we drove through, and he said our rolling savannah reminded him of Montana or Colorado, where he may have been from.

The hunting lodge was in a farming district called Karoi and by the time we got there I had crashed out. My dad woke me early in the morning and we set off into the bush.

It wasn’t big-game country, we were after birds, guinea fowl and quail. What I remember though was that we never shot a thing the whole time. In fact we barely saw a bird. All we did was walk. We must have walked 20 miles the first day. I trailed alongside my Dad, thorns and weed grass scratching my legs, my shoes killing my feet. I may as well have been naked for all the good “the uniform” did me. It was no use complaining – and I didn’t dare – but I remember thinking as we walked that I should have been wearing what Monroe had on. He floated through the bush as if his clothes were made of silk and air, while even my father and uncle seemed to be fighting the bush.

By 4 pm the sun was still high and we rested. My dad cracked open beers for the men, and a coke for me, and I collapsed to the ground, exhausted. I knew I would have to go on though the lodge was still two hours away. But then Monroe did a remarkable thing. When it was time to continue he unloaded and took apart his shotgun, put the pieces in a bag over his shoulder, and said, “I’m gonna’ take it easy on the way in, gentlemen, soak up the view.” Then he leant down, hoisted me on his shoulders with hands the size of boat paddles, and said. “Come on, son, nearly home.” And he carried me like that for two hours, all the way back to the lodge. I felt like I was standing on a giant.

My uncle died not long after that hunting trip, and I never saw or heard of Monroe again. It’s now more than thirty five years later and my parents, as tough a pair of white Africans you will ever meet, are still in Zimbabwe, caught up in a political whirlwind where you need to be tough to survive. I’m a long way from them though, happily living in America, married to a beautiful Jersey girl, with two young American kids. I sometimes wonder whether I am here because of Monroe, the impression a man made on me in the bush. I actually asked my dad about him recently and while he said he didn’t remember the hunting trip, he recalled an American friend my uncle knew from the army. He didn't know where he was from in America though. I reckon he is out there now, somewhere in Montana or Wyoming, an American archetype, comfortable in his skin and in his clothes. He doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone.