Jake Wore Neat Foot Covers, Spats

They were Spats

They taught me the utility of fine dress.

Queen Elizabeth said, “A good face is the best letter of recommendation.” A person’s appearance and demeanor can be a powerful signal of their character, abilities, and qualities.

Good first impressions can lead to opportunities.

Here are a few things I experienced with students, along with a lesson I learned many years ago from my father and a proud uncle.

I quoted the Queen to a medical student who showed up one morning to make hospital rounds with me and continued, “If you want to be a doctor, you must look like one. Patients expect professionalism. And part of professionalism is appearance. Perhaps you would consider shaving and wearing decent, clean clothes and a tie tomorrow, and I will allow you on my service.”

Those were the days when students felt they needed independence, to be their own person, to look any way they wanted. Though I appreciated it, it wasn’t for me. Not on my medical service. Not with my patients. Not for this or any profession.

“If you feel I have intruded upon your rights, then you may complain to the Dean. I don’t care. These are my rules.”

He returned the following morning, looking professional, and off we went. I enjoyed his month with me.

“What a fine-looking young man you are,” said one patient. “Are you going to be a doctor?” I wonder if my ‘rules’ teed him up to all the fine questions he challenged me with that month?

Another . . .

In my later years, I enrolled in a college class with undergraduates. Wearing khaki pants, a collared, button-up shirt, running shoes, socks, and a sweater, I was “overdressed.”

As the students strolled in, I was dumbfounded. They weren’t dressed for a professor’s class. They were hardly dressed at all.

Holes in jeans, skimpy shorts, midriffs out, some with rings in their navels. I wondered what happened to pride, once prominent in the way people dressed.

Dad and Uncle Jake

Dad never left the house without a tie or at least his shirt buttoned to the top. For him, being well-dressed was the way it should be. He knew no other. He personified self-respect and dignity. He respected himself and others. He honored shared space.

Dad, age 25 but not wearing Spats

Uncle Jake. I wanted to dance in his shoes. He wore spats. Spats, short for "spatterdashes," were worn to protect shoes and ankles from mud, dirt, and water on unpaved streets.

Courtesy P.G. Wodehouse publications

Jake was my Uncle Louie’s nickname, a generic term for friend, good fellow. That he was. In his day, he was special.

The spats telegraphed his style. Sharp, neat, groomed and noticeable, he wore clothes bought at the finest clothiers; a Homburg hat (“My money hat”), a white shirt and a tie, a dark pin-striped suit with a vest, leather gloves, and a Chesterfield coat with a velvet collar.

He had closely set, soft, penetrating eyes, a generous nose accentuated by his Adolph Menjou moustache, and black hair, not one out of place. Mom said he was a smooth dancer. She learned by standing on his feet. No surprise since the only other person I knew who wore spats was Fred Astaire. But Jake wore his spats all the time, even when he went for breakfast.

Grandpa and Jake. No spats here but an El Producto

He had impeccable table etiquette. “People notice your table manners, Edward.”

Where did he learn? Perhaps anyone who wore spats knew.

Uncle Jake made people happy with a kind remark, a joke, and the banjo. When he played and sang, he made the party. He became an expert glassblower, but it was an occupation ill-suited to him. So, he moved into sales, first insurance and then cars. Who could resist? Generations bought from him. He first coined the phrase, “See Jake for a break.”

I was never a youngster in his presence, but rather a friend, one of the guys, a buddy, companion, chum, an adult, just as he somehow knew I wanted to be. He called me Edward, and when he asked how I was, I knew he meant it as he engaged me as no other adult did.

Unknown to me until later years, his world was small; that of the Italo-American Club, where he played cards until the early morning hours.

“Papa Jake; he was the best gin player around.”

Out late smoking cigars. That was his world. He drank the last bottle of Narragansett beer and smoked a never-ending supply of El Productos. Friends were his family; card games were their bond.

When his brother died at a young age, he said to me, “Doc, I have seen a lot, but this has hit me more than anything.” It was the most emotion I had seen from him, but it didn’t surprise me. I knew it was there, hidden, not far below his Chesterfield coat.

Years later, Uncle Jake became my patient through a long and draining final illness. He was still ever polite and engaging. He never complained, resigning himself to the journey.

Did I learn from him? Yes. He made how a self-made, rugged individual presented himself. Would that I had a little Jake in me. Would that he had a little of me in him. I wish that we had known each other better in those years in between. We had much more to learn from each other.

He lived with class and, along the way, left an unforgettable mark on me and many. Worldly. Soft spoken. Content. A Homburg hat and a Chesterfield coat.

And Spats.

Giorgio Armani said, “Elegance is not standing out, but being remembered.

Ó 2026