white collar crime

From: etsy

Starched shirts, corrosively starched… white: collars like leg irons. Whiter than anything my eyes had ever been subjected to — except raw sunlight, I suppose — or new snow in the glare of it.
     Every Sunday morning (or on that 1962 summer day we visited the David Dunlop Observatory in Richmond Hill — an outing that called for our Sunday best, even though our necks were raw with sunburn, I recall) my brother and I would be obliged to don a fresh Wimbridge Cleaners-enbalmed shirt...
     First, pull away the polyethylene caul; then the blue-on-white, paper sash (“WIMBRIDGE CLEANERS Ltd.”) unfold the flattened arms — you had to push your hand hard through the opening near the shoulders to break through to the rigid cuffs: the cufflink holes were healed over, the cuff edges as dangerous as the collar.

Photo: Michael Hale

     This coat hanger once carried a dress, no doubt — one of my mother's dresses. The man who delivered it wore a peaked cap, a bow tie and (of course) a crisp, fresh, white shirt.

See also: Swot Like Mad