The Mills of Pendleton Shine Slowly, but they Shine Exceeding Fine*

By happenstance, recently, I rediscovered Pendleton Woolen Mills. I was looking for a vest, and they have some glorious designs.

It brought to mind a most curious memory. Long since, while still a callow youth, I was a callow clergyman in California. Every year, the congregations in the Synod to which we belonged held meetings. Like most organizations, there were the Big Shots who ran things. I do not know whether there is anything smaller than bird shot, but if there is, I was one of them.

The name--Pendleton--brought to mind that when the clergy met to do whatever they did, there was always a time when the stiff collars were set aside, and we got casual. The Big Shots loved Pendleton shirts, and wore them like grouse stamping around in . . . no, I guess that for grouse it is mating season. The clergy I remember just preened in their expensive plaid shirts, providing what Autumn and aspen trees do in other places.

For real color, one needs more than aspens and clergy. It takes more northern places, where the sun has spent the summer before easing back south again for the winter. "Woolen Mills" is part of Pendleton's name. That is when those shirts are finest: when they are bright in the cold.

*Actually, Sextus Empiricus said, "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine". That is to say, justice will take its time. Sextus Empiricus was a Greek physician/philosopher who is thought to have lived in Alexandria and Athens.

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