I never had to wear a suit for work.

Other than for banquets and such.

And, barring a complete collapse of the news gathering system in America or a complete loss of interest in the outdoors (neither of which will happen) in the next 15 or 20 years, I don't think I will ever have to wear a suit for work.

As you may gather, I carry that as a badge of honor, for whatever reason.

Saturday I was reminded of suits and life stages.

I was interviewing Mike Okoniewski for an obit on his father Frank ``Oakie'' Okoniewski.

Mike and I are the same age. When he was chartered out of Diversey Harbor, I went out with him once or twice a year. So we got to talking about how we have two or three of these every year now, the passing of a friend's parent.

Then Mike added, and now we're getting some that are our age, too.

He was right about that, too.

This morning as I walked the meathead, more of a stroll than usual in this heat, I thought of that conversation and it reminded me of the suits in my closet.

For my high school graduation, I got a decent suit. From playing club soccer after high school and through college, and working landscaping, that suit fit well into my 20s.

A few times a year, I would have to break it out for a wedding or a graduation.

Then came my late 20s and 30s, when weddings were very few but a few funerals were sprinkled in. Mostly the suit came out for work-related banquets or trips.

By my 40s, the weddings nearly stopped other than a couple for nieces and nephews and funerals started becoming more regular. And they were funerals that mattered, for people like for my mother and others who influenced my life direction.

By then, it was a different suit. It was the best one I ever owned. I bought it for an outdoors speech I had to give at a banquet.

When I read the story of the more than $200,000 disgraced and booted-out Gov. Blagojevich spent at one custom-suit maker in just a few years I marveled, almost in a perverse awe.

My best suit, complete with a good tie and shirt was a couple hundred. Not a couple hundred thousand.

But my life is a little different than Blagojevich's.

Some things suit me better.