The Mast General Store: Purveyors of Winter Woolen Wear That Wicks

Rules for dressing comfortably in "The Southern Style" are fairly simple: 100% cotton, open weave, light colors (preferably white), loose-fitting garments. On a hot August day...or actually, on most any day from June through September...put on a black, polyester/cotton, fitted tee and a favorite pair of black jeans and like the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz," you will hear yourself crying out, "I'm melting! I'm melting!"

As is often the case, when I most need information, not to mention experience, I am just as often at a loss. Such is my current situation with my decision to go to Holden Village and the clothes I willl need to get me through the winter. I generally know that such winter clothes as those I have on hand, winter wear purchased in Florida to be worn in Florida, will prove to be insufficient for the long, snowy winter in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area of Washington State...perhaps the word insufficient is, in and of itself, insufficient to adequately describe the inadequacy of that part of my current wardrobe that has, heretofore, served so nobly to protect me from the vicissitudes of a Florida winter.

Enter (drum roll here) The Mast General Store in Boone, NC! Enter a fit 30-something skier/outdoors-woman/salesclerk/guide for the uninitiated through the travails of shopping for woolen necessities. Enter the word wicking into my vocabulary.

I was in Boone (named after guess-who...a clue...I bought my grandson Alex a coonskin hat!) to visit with Dan and Sue Lindgren, who live there, and to meet up with Liz Merchant of Phoenix. All were at Holden last summer, Dan and Sue for a 3-week volunteer position in housekeeping, and Liz for a 5-month position as assistant to the registrar. In their efforts to show us the highlights of the area, Dan and Sue took us to The Mast General Store.

We spent the first part of our time there in the part of the store where they sell candy...I mean that you cannot believe how much candy is in that store...300 kinds (the sign said). You pick up a basket and load up. And most of it is candy straight from your childhood...if your childhood happened to peak in the '40's! Candy you had long since forgotten and candy you thought you would never see again even if you did happen to think about it. We spent quite a long time exclaiming and reminiscing over the candy but bought not a piece. No one mentioned it, but I will be so bold to suggest the reason we failed to follow through had something to do with the fact that we all have old fillings, crowns, and caps that would possibly have been dislodged while biting into a Sugar Daddy.

We wandered out of the candy side of the store and into the "outfitters" section of that store and the other one (an annex) just down the road where we met up with Wonder Woman and Wool Wear. Noticing, I suppose, my helplessness, she had soon pried my story out of me and began her elucidation on my behalf. First, there was a lecture on socks...the importance of socks and the necessity of having most excellent socks...i.e. Smartwool socks...i.e. expensive socks. And I believe I heard the term wicking for the first of many times. I selected 3 pairs.

Then I thought I would check out the winter boots to go with the winter socks I had selected. This part lasted only a short few moments. I looked at the price tags and felt it necessary to move immediately to more mundane items.

Since I have been told many times that I would need a really good (I assume by now that I can substitute the word expensive) set of long underwear, I find a table of what looks to be suitable (and it is expensive) underwear. Sue helped me to determine that (thankfully) I would need to buy only the large size as opposed to the extra-large size and we had just found a top and a matching bottom in my large size when Wonder Woman popped in to use the w-word again and to let me know that the long underwear currently under consideration was equivalent to Cuddl Duds (which I already had) and would do little to keep me warm for any length of time outside. I needed some long underwear apparently so special they did not even sell it...outfitters though they were.

Before checking out with my socks, I passed a sales basket with some stellar wool gloves...big honkers with a leather "paw" on the hand side, lined with flannel. Wonder Woman took one look and with great disdain informed me that that particular pair of gloves would serve only to keep my hands warm while walking from one building to another. For most other outdoor activities, they would only serve to get wet and that was a bad thing.

I wanted to ask her if that kind of getting wet would be termed "wicking"...perhaps in reverse...from outside the glove to the inside...but by then I had had enough. I paid for my socks and left. Lived to search another day for underwear and gloves. Wonder Woman said that the most important items of winter wear are those that lie next to your skin. I will keep that in mind.