​Of course it’s not spring, but never one to hold to tradition, I’ve been doing a ton of extra cleaning… recycling, re-purposing and re-imagining of stuff.   
 
This includes selling a very cool coffee table made with legs from a 1920s stove (we still have three other tables);
a complete cleanse of my file cabinet (where I discovered a forgotten letter from movie star Van Heflin), and free-cycling many yards of denim and corduroy fabric (new slipcovers involved here).  
 
Then there’s this other item. 
 
It’s hanging in my closet, but I haven’t put it on for at least five years.  Yeah, I’ve been saying goodbye to it for a while now, but now I’m almost there, almost ready to pass it on to its next owner.  
 
It’s my trench coat.  And if I seem pretty attached to it, I am. 
 
That’s because, for those who don’t know, owning such a coat once upon a time wasn’t just about owning sturdy 
outerwear for inclement weather. 
 
Nope.  It was part of the uniform that made me a journalist. 
 
After all, Edward R. Murrow—one of the most esteemed reporters of the last century—wore a trench coat while broadcasting dispatches from London during World War II.  It seemed that everyone on the 60 Minutes team had trench coats, too:  I remember watching the late Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Bob Simon chasing down bad guys in theirs. They’ve also been essential to the wardrobes of famous female correspondents, a list that includes Barbara Walters,
Diane Sawyer and Lara Logan.
 
The trench coat has served fictional muckrakers as well.
 
Lou Grant, the gruff newspaper editor played to perfection by Ed Asner on television, had a trench coat, even in sunny Los Angeles.  And in the 1950s TV series Adventures of Superman, star George Reeves conveniently grabbed his trench coat out of Lois Lane’s car when, disguised as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, a bomb ripped his clothes off. 
 
I got mine—a woman’s model made by London Fog, beige and double breasted with a removable plaid liner—sometime in college and after the circus life. (Most recently, the Seattle based manufacturer became famous again in Mad Men.)  It was a mindful buy, made not long before I received my journalism degree and high-tailed it to New York City.  Given that this was long before the Internet and imported clothes from China, the purchase took place early one evening at Robinson’s department store in Beverly Hills, and was made in the United States.  I paid what was then considered a pretty penny for it, too, probably in the $75 range.    
 
Putting it on, I felt that I had arrived.
 
The coat traveled with me to Manhattan, where I did some freelance work (landing bylines in People, Working Mother and Ms.) while concurrently working as an intern for McCall’s magazine.  It then rode the subway with me to a small publishing house (in the same building as The New Yorker!), where I was employed as an editor. There were a handful of other writing gigs after that, but finally, it hung in my office at Columbine, the in-house publication at CBS; there; I was a staff writer.   
 
When I returned to California four years later, the trench coat was still in great shape.
 
It was beside me when I was hired to write a couple of lifestyle articles for a teen magazine on the Sunset Strip, and next for a movie-oriented public relations firm.  It then accompanied me to the West Coast bureau of Screen International, a British film trade magazine, where I did a whole lot of interviews in the field, as well as attending hundreds of sneak screenings and more than a few press conferences. 
 
After a stint with a syndicated entertainment columnist, then a move to a tabloid magazine, the trench coat and I stumbled into television production.  There, both of us spent nearly a decade at Unsolved Mysteries.  (Come to think of it, host Robert Stack was fond of wearing his trench coat on camera.)  
 
From the department of You Can Learn Something New Every Day, it wasn’t until I began researching this post that I learned it wasn’t reporters who made the trench coat so popular.
 
In fact, the coat was made for, duh, fighting in the trenches.
 
Designed as an efficient alternative to the heavy serge coats worn by British and French soldiers in World War I, its invention is claimed by both Burberry and Aquasctum, with the latter’s claim dating back to the 1850s.  As for Burberry, founder Thomas Burberry submitted a design for an Army officer’s raincoat to the United Kingdom War Office in 1901. 
 
Then, during what became known as The Great War, modifications were made: shoulder straps to attach epaulettes or other rank insignia, and a D-ring for fastening map cases, swords and perhaps hand grenades to the coat’s belt.  The advent of World War II only made the coats more popular.  British military personnel continued to wear them, but now other soldiers from other nations, notably the United States and Soviet Union, wore similar designs.  Many veterans returning to civilian life kept the coats, and made them fashionable for both men and women.  This, of course, included globe-trotting reporter Edward R. Murrow.  
 
So undeniably, the trench coat has a lineage that is noble and distinguished.   
 
But somewhere along the way, it stopped working for me. 
 
Some of this definitely had to do with becoming a mom; my daughter’s early years saw me in sensible sweat pants and hoodies.  These days, some of it has to do with living in a sweet beach town—a hard-boiled writer’s coat simply doesn’t fit in.  When I do need a coat, I’ll zip up my red or blue parka, even when I’m wearing the occasional dress.
 
And mostly, I don’t wear the trench coat anymore because I’m not the same kind of journalist anymore.   
 
My work now tends to be done at home, with pretty much everything I need waiting on the Internet, or with phone and email interviews.  The days of hopping a plane to chase down folks in person; rushing out the door to interview someone who’s in town for only a day, or traveling long distances for research is pretty much gone. 
 
Then why do I still have the coat? 
 
It’s because I don’t want to give it away to just anyone. 
 
In fact, I’m hoping to gift it to someone who still does, or is longing to do, the writing things I once did. 
 
Perhaps, like I once was, she’ll be a new journalism school grad ready to change a corner of a corner of the world, ready to slay the dragons that journalists need to do, now more than ever, and that the best ones do so well. 
 
I also want that someone to appreciate how much this singular piece of clothing once defined me—and how I hope it will do the same for her.
 
Until then, my trench coat (and the stories that go with it) will remain happily retired in my closet… waiting for a new, and I hope dazzling, set of adventures.       
 
Is there an article of clothing, or another object you own, with an interesting tale behind it?  I look forward to your stories and comments! 
 
P.S. Want to know more about the history of the trench coat?  Check out this detailed article from Smithsonian magazine, at www.smithsonianmag.com/history/trench-coat-made-its-mark-world-war-i-180955397/?no-ist.
 
P.S.S. Today’s celebrities love trench coats, too.  Take a look, at www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/g2926/iconic-trench-coat-fashion/.

​Sometimes, doing the right thing also means doing the hardest thing.
 
It has been about three weeks since The Hubster and I surrendered Rusty—aka The Rust, Rustinator and Rust Person—the beautiful but damaged Aussie shepherd we took into our hearts a couple of years ago.
 
Despite being a gorgeous pure-bred, with a magnificent red and white coat, as well as one blue eye and one brown eye, he had been dealt a bad deck of cards from the start.
 
First, Rusty was born in a puppy mill.  Second, the owners of the mill took him from his mother and litter mates a full four weeks early because a family had seen his beautiful colors online—and was willing to pay nearly $1,000 to have him “delivered” earlier.  It saddens me to say that these folks are related to us, and that they also convinced Rusty’s breeders to bring him to them.  So, he was separated, probably terrified and so not ready to be wrenched from his mother, who was now several hundred miles away, on Thanksgiving Day of 2013.
 
It was an awful match from the get-go.
 
Bred to herd, Aussies need a lot of space to exercise, and because they are also super-smart, should have a job to do.  But the family lived in a small townhouse with no yard; on top of that, they were gone most of the day.  And because they didn’t want a puppy tearing apart said residence, Rusty was crated nearly all of the time. 
 
Nine months later, the family decided they couldn’t be bothered with him.
 
So, when I saw that one member was advertising Rusty on social media, we decided to step up to the plate.  We didn’t know how long we would keep him, but we knew we had to try to give him the love and security he had never had. 
 
Meeting at a park halfway between our towns, The Hubster still remembers how it went down.
 
“I’d only met Rusty once,” he says.  “But as soon as I opened the van, he immediately jumped in.  The look on his face was, ‘Let’s get out of here.  Now.’”
 
We can’t prove it because we weren’t there, but his behaviors upon bringing him home indicated that he had also been starved as punishment, and frequently smacked across his hindquarters as well.  (Our groomer and vet thought so, too.  Another vet familiar with Rusty told us, “It’s pretty hard to screw up an Aussie.  But they did.”) 
 
But ultimately, while our household was absolutely a few steps up—a big back yard; our two other dogs, Hank and Sadie, to hang with, and a whole lot of snuggling from us—the right fit wasn’t here either.
 
For starters, we knew Rusty was an anxious guy.  What we didn’t realize is that it was much more serious—in fact, he suffered from acute post-traumatic stress disorder.  And even if we showered him with a zillion kisses every single day, that condition wasn’t going to go away.  And who could blame him?  Being snatched from his mom and brothers and sisters way too early, then boxed up, hit and denied food, he was, quite simply, a hot mess. 
 
Thus, we noticed odd behaviors, such as snatching any food he could reach; barking incessantly at our feet during dinner, and not allowing us to brush his back legs.  He also took to growling and barking right in Sadie’s face.  Thankfully, she ignored him.
 
Maybe this conduct would have lessened had The Teenage Daughter kept her promise.
 
Before we got Rusty, she had solemnly vowed that he would be “my dog,” and to that end, she would be responsible for everything that entailed.  But she neither walked nor brushed him (tasks left to me); refused to let him share her bed (“He sheds!”), and wouldn’t even feed him.  So the poor guy would settle next to her closed door every night, while Sadie and Hank slept with us.  And because Rusty was a super smart dog, he had to have felt, once again, like the odd man out.     
Still, we probably would have dribbled along except for one very big thing.
 
Late last year, Sadie and Rusty got into an epic dog fight. 
 
Sadie had been patient for such a long time, and that day, Rusty got in her face one too many times.  Blood was drawn on both sides, not to mention floors and walls.  The Hubster and I literally had to tear the two dogs apart; we were sure that one would have been killed if we hadn’t been home.
 
Still, we assumed the fight was an anomaly.
 
But then the brawls increased, first every few months, then every month, and finally, every few weeks.  They always began when Rusty sauntered over to Sadie, then snapped at her, inches from her muzzle.  We learned to pull the dogs away by their hind legs, which resulted in Rusty biting me hard on the hand once, and The Hubster receiving more than his share of injuries as well.  
 
The last fight, which nearly cost Sadie an eye, was the determining factor. 
 
After consulting with our vet, who agreed that surrender was the best option, I took Rusty to our local humane society.  A terrific non-profit with a re-homing rate of 97 percent, Rusty still had to go in for a doggie interview to make sure the place could likely find him a home. 
 
Upon seeing him, they praised his gorgeous colors and said that with his pure-bed status, Rusty was a “hot commodity” and would probably be adopted within the week. He would also be checked out by a vet (as it turned out, he had several deep bites from Sadie, and had to be sedated and sutured), as well as walked five times a day, with a trainer also spending bunches of daily time with him. I also made sure to let these folks know that Rusty needed to be the only dog in his new family.  I added that if at all possible, he should live on a ranch, where he could work and run and be loved, loved, loved from sunrise to sunset.
 
As two employees, one on each side, walked him away, Rusty turned and gave me a quizzical look.  He seemed to be saying, “What are you doing?”
 
I made myself wait a week before calling the society, which is when I heard about Rusty’s wounds.  A day later, a worker contacted us to ask if we could bring in any dog food, as he was refusing to eat their kibble.  Staffers had been feeding Rusty baby food to get him to eat.  
 
The Hubster and I delivered a large bag of Rusty’s familiar grub within 30 minutes of that call.  We didn’t ask to see him and they didn’t offer.  I think we both knew that a visit would confuse Rusty and undoubtedly cause more heartache—on both sides. 
 
But once there, we were also told that it looked like Rusty was likely going to be adopted the very next day! The potential forever family didn’t have any other dogs!  And they lived on a ranch!     
 
I checked the society’s web site a little while ago, and Rusty is no longer on the adopt-a-pet link.
 
I should feel good about all of this, and I guess I do.  But I’m also sad because I really miss Rusty.  Of course, I also love him, and I always will. 
 
Most of all, I hope that Rusty now has the life he has always deserved. 
 
Have you ever rescued and/or surrendered a pet?  I look forward to your comments and stories.