When I entered the wardrobe I found Kelly straight away and this room seemed to really interest her. She was searching through a few things she had laid out on the table and examining them quite thoroughly. I asked her what she thought about them and apparently startled her, for she jumped a little and looked back to me.
“Oh, you gave me a start!” she said a little taken aback, “I’ve been browsing through these clothes for some time now, and I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen anything quite like them. I don’t know if Mr. Nido made everything himself, but he certainly has very peculiar tastes whether he did or not.”
“I have to be honest that doesn’t surprise me much; I’d be more surprised if he didn’t have at least something peculiar about his taste in clothing.” I replied. “During work, he only wore the standard janitor’s uniform I recall. I don’t remember him really outside of that context though.”
Kelly then beckoned me to come to where she was standing and pointed out several different articles of clothing to me. She went through them with me and showed me some of the discoveries she had found. It seems that by and large Nido’s tastes in clothing were purely for utility, and gave little heed or regard for aesthetics. But this was only first glance, there were also very unique and handsome garments too. I suspect that Nido treated the clothing he made like any of his other arts, made for both utility and aesthetics. I began to find a trend in Nido’s way of thinking, that aesthetics did actually serve for utility, primarily in inspiration. There were several garments he made that seemed to fulfill the duties of both form and function together, and I am not quite sure why Nido might do this, other than to see if he could, but also because of a general diligence that he seemed to put into all of his work. This may be akin to something isn’t worth doing unless you do it well and fully, at least to the best of your ability.
Some of the first items of clothing I came across were what seemed to be Nido’s work clothes. This included what looked like several jumpsuits, with large pockets for specialized tools sewn everywhere. These jumpsuits generally could hold items such as hammers, measuring tapes, knives, saws, and so on like that. They had several very interesting designs on them. The designs were subtle, and certainly not overt, but they were made out of semi-shiny material or were various colors that might prevent them from being made dirty with the particular use that Nido had for them. They seemed to be specialized for the different uses that Nido might use them for. This would include suits made for carpentry, metalworking, glassblowing, and so on. Each suit, had the correct pockets for the tools most commonly used in whatever art they were made for, or at least it had the correct pockets for the most portable tools of that bunch. Each of these suits were not only made to carry things, but also made to protect Nido as best they could from any errant tools he may encounter. For example several of the jumpsuits had long sleeves and on the end of these were attached leather wrist guards. Most of the shirts were amply thick, which I imagine must have been rather hot and even heavy to wear, but curious, I put my hand inside one of the suits and found to my surprise that it was actually very cool and seemed to have excellent airflow for as heavy as it was. It was also much lighter than I expected. Also on doing this, I checked to find a tag, to see if perhaps Nido had bought this, but all I could find was a small tag with Nido’s symbols on it.
Each of the jumpsuits also had things attached by cords, which were kept inside the pockets. This namely included some variety of protective gloves, usually made out of leather or rubber, a mask, and socks. The gloves all had some sort of lining to make them as comfortable as possible; even the rubber gloves had linings. The masks were usually made of a strong cloth and were meant to cover the face from ear to ear. For the eyes, I later found a group of various goggles, which were meant to attach to the masks, via a zipper sort of thing. The goggles themselves curved around the face, so as to make one look like a lizard, I believe also, the goggles were made to optimally fit so as not to really feel like they would not be in the way. The socks down below were also made to attach to the inner leggings of the suits. They were a very thick sturdy wool usually and I get the feeling that Nido would try to protect himself as much as possible when inside his suits by having them all in one piece. There were some general purpose suits, that I imagine Nido used when compiling components together from various projects. He also had other things that went with these suits, such as very sturdy steel toed boots, a large variety of them, but Nido must have made his own shoes too, because they had no marks of belonging to a company of any kind. The shoes, though extremely strong were also very light, and I believe Nido must have found a new steel alloy that he used in the construction of these shoes. The shoes too, would zip up on the outsides of the leg portions of most of these jumpsuits thus enabling even greater protection. When I looked at these jumpsuits, one thing that stuck out to me that was quite strange was how clean these suits were, I wondered if Nido ever made a mistake.
Moving on from the work portion of Nido’s wardrobe, I came to what appeared to be more of a leisure section. By leisure I mean clothes not necessarily intended to do work, but rather to enjoy. He had a large amount of different clothes for this purpose too. Some of them were obviously for cooler weather, for hotter weather, and so on. They all looked extremely comfortable. I started at what I believed to be the winter section because the garments were all thick and there were many coats and winter accessories. All clothes in this section had a thick fur-like texture, there were parka looking coats, as well as full body suits that looked rather restraining. Out of curiosity I got into one, and tried it out, to discover that it wasn’t as hard to move in as it looked, although it was still a little restrictive. I wondered how often Nido would actually wear these things, and how often he had been compelled to go outside during the wintertime, or if he had them instead because he wanted to design the most comfortable coat possible to prove to himself he could. I came to the conclusion he had designed these for the latter purpose, because the coats were nearly unsoiled. Each item of clothing Nido had made seemed to be a variation on a theme to some extent. I figured he would design something find utility in it, and then simply find a better way to do it, but not wanting to be wasteful he wouldn’t scrap his original designs, or more likely he found a basic design he liked and made alterations on that design for various uses.
I began to discover that even in leisure Nido would make things as pragmatic as possible, in one capacity or other. Most of the winter coats had very soft and comfortable interiors, they were usually fairly sleek, unless it was obvious by design they were made to look thicker. Trying a few on, they were very warm indeed, and I nearly got the impression that they were so warm as to require no clothing between the person wearing these coats and moreover the jumpsuits, but couldn’t really tell without standing in a freezer or a deep dark winter. What polymers Nido used to create all of his garments I couldn’t even guess. I eventually got down to more of the summer section and discovered to my surprise what looked like very normal clothing, that someone may even find in a store. There were polo shirts, T-shirts, khaki pants, socks, anything one could think of, even jeans. When I found these I felt surely that Nido must have simply bought these and checking for tags I was correct on a few. On the rest, there were a few designs that I’m sure Nido himself invented and although they looked normal these clothes had pockets hidden in unusual spots, such as the underside of the pant-leg or along the seam of a shirt there’d be a tiny hidden pocket. What Nido filled these with I couldn’t say, but I did find them inventive and figured he must have had a good use for them, as they seemed well used. One thing I noticed about all of his pants, store-bought or not, was there were six buttons on all of them in a triangular fashion with two sets of two in the front and one set of two in the rear… all on the interior of the pants. What I soon discovered about this was they were all for suspenders. Apparently Nido didn’t like belts.
One thing I noticed a lot of were vests. All vests were made of a very good sturdy looking material that could be used for anything from working to entertaining or simply lounging, which I doubt Nido did much of. They seemed extremely practical, which I normally wouldn’t think of vests as being, but in this case Nido had pockets cut everywhere in them, and with many different things to go with them. I didn’t know how many of the other clothes Nido had made he really wore, but the vests I could see a good deal of use in. It seemed that Nido thought of a vest the same way most people think of a purse. The vests all had a great deal of pockets, many of which were specialized. Some vests looked like a handyman’s, some looked like a vest one would wear to an opera, with the pockets hidden. The pockets looked like they would accommodate for many different things, from a place to put a checkbook or store one’s keys to a place to put paintbrushes and hammers. All of these vests made me wonder why more people wouldn’t wear them, they all seemed very good at carrying things and they’d always be on one’s person. Nido had all the pockets placed in such a way as to cause minimum discomfort when resting against things, or when they were full. Some things stuck out, but overall they were good and concealing. A few features that all vests seemed to have were a place for a few pens and a notepad, I presume there were there for Nido to write down his thoughts as they came to him. Both of these things were all still in the vests and I took the liberty to look through them. What I quickly discovered were his notes all scribbled in what looked to be a very illegible hand to me, but on closer inspection I discovered his language was written everywhere. It seemed that Nido invented his language in order to write shorthand notes as quickly as possible.
Next I came across something that seemed quite commonplace to me when I first walked into the room, but soon found much more to be there than I first realized. Hanging in front of me were two of Nido’s janitor’s jumpsuits, replete with our company logo and Nido stitched in the usual blue-collar nametag sort of way. I would never have thought of it as anything but an ordinary janitor’s outfit, but learning what I had been about Nido’s private life, I thought perhaps there was more to this suit than met the eye. So, I went over to it, took it down and immediately started searching through it. Now, it is a bit of an odd feeling to search through a dead man’s possessions in general, but it sort of stuck out to me how personally invasive it was to search specifically through his clothing. The vests and things didn’t seem so strange to search because I’d never seen Nido in these clothes, not even in pictures, but I had on several occasions seen Nido in these very outfits, in fact that was all I’d seen him in, so for me it connected Nido to this house, it was the only thing of his that I saw and knew to be his. At first glance there was nothing unexpected about this janitorial outfit, and I suppose that’s precisely what Nido wanted from it, if something had looked unusual or extraordinary about it, it would raise questions Nido likely didn’t want to answer. On a deeper inspection I found that this suit had the usual pockets he put on his vests and things, but it seemed that there was room for a bigger notepad here and several pens. As I opened the notebook inside I found several sketches with his writing around them in what appeared to be a shortened version of his language.
Nido it appears, had most of his ideas at work and because he worked such late hours could constantly write in his sketchpad with little chance of being caught. This pad was loaded with sketches and I was sure he must have gone through a given pad within a month or less. I was curious to see if I could find the rest of them given enough time. Looking even further in, I found a more unusual pocket that was located on the back of his hip to be presumably concealed by his work belt. This pocket’s design wasn’t immediately obvious to me, and after a little time stuck in thought, I figured out it was linked up to a wire line that would run along his back and up to his head, it then split into two spots, one running to just below his ear, and the other running to just beneath his collar, touching where the neck would be. There was nothing in either the pocket or where the wire would go and looking around I couldn’t find anything that would fit this unusual design, but eventually did figure out it was meant to be hooked up to an audio device of some sort, probably another unique design of Nido’s. Something clever about it was the place where Nido could press the buttons to do all the functions of the audio device, one would never notice them unless they thought specifically to look for them. Nido could easily disguise that he was operating the device at all by simply brushing his hand past them as anyone would carelessly do. The more I discovered these things, the more I came to the conclusion that nearly everything was well thought out and deliberate in Nido’s mind, a quality I would never have guessed him to have.
Also built into these jumpsuits were places Nido could stick his pipe, and one pipe was still in the jumpsuit when I checked it. The strange thing about Nido’s smoking habit was more to do with the tobacco itself, rather than simply the unusually shaped pipe pocket. The tobacco wasn’t too odd in itself, but rather in what kept it good to smoke. Nido had constructed a very thin and slender humidor to maintain the tobacco that was a little baffling. It was so thin and it seemed there was no real way to keep moisture within the humidor, but essentially here was a little machine, totally silent keeping the tobacco fresh. The humidor was totally independent of all power and I later discovered it worked simply by the momentum of Nido’s body as he walked, the actions he would take would suck the surrounding moisture in the air to the tobacco like a dehumidifier. The main question I had about this was, when did Nido take the time to smoke his pipe? I could only assume on his breaks at work, but then it occurred to me to sniff the actual tobacco inside. It smelled like nothing but air from what I could see. I wondered if Nido could smoke an odorless tobacco on the job and have no one notice. It would be an amusing site to see a custodian moping and smoking his pipe at the same time. I touched a little bit of the shag in the humidor to my mouth to see if it was also tasteless, and surprisingly the flavor was actually quite good. I wondered how a thing could smell like nothing but taste so potently. Out of curiosity I decided to try and smoke some of this tobacco myself (at a later date and from a different pipe) and came to the conclusion that no, indeed Nido didn’t smoke at work, when set alight, it smelled as potently as it tasted.
Tobacco aside, after searching through the second jumpsuit, I stumbled on Nido’s recording device in the same pocket it was supposed to go on the other one. I was excited to maybe unlock some of Nido’s ideas aurally. No sooner had I started to play the tape when the only thing that seemed to come out of the recorder were faint whispers and nothing more. Perplexed I looked at Kelly and asked what she made from it. She told me that she believed it was Nido’s voice, and I soon began to grow more accustomed to the prominence of this made up language Nido had created in his life. When I first encountered it, I thought it was simply a project to see if he could make his language, but what hadn’t occurred to me was that he would have created it out of a necessity, not simply as a way of massaging his ego. It appeared that his language was designed to be as quite as possible so as not to alert people to the sound of Nido talking to himself when he was around others. There was a little English here and there, and sometimes he would even hum a bit, but I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be cryptic, or he was just particularly musical at the moment of recording. It appeared that the bulk of Nido’s language at work went into the audio device, or sometimes he would play different tapes to learn about things relevant to what he was doing. The sketchpad, it seemed was designed more to be for, sketches. It seemed that the whole of this suit was designed for stealth and privacy, so it confused me as to how Nido would make his sketches while he was working without raising any suspicions, or for that matter, how he could have an earpiece in and not be noticed. I figured for the second question at least, Nido must have designed it to look like something else, but the answer to that question I never really learned as I never found the earpiece.
Having satisfied most of my curiosity about his work suits, I looked further into his collections of strange clothing. The thing that stuck out most to me, was Nido’s vast number of hats. It appeared that he kept his head covered all the time, and with the obvious sun bleaching of some of them, Nido presumably wore some of these a lot. I had never thought about why a person might want to wear a hat, but it seemed sensible to see these all here. It seemed that for the hats as for most of the other clothing, Frazer had a hat for nearly every purpose. Most of them were fully broad brimmed. Some of them had a similar recording device as the one in his jumpsuit. Others looked more like headbands, perhaps designed to keep his hair out of his face at one point. Some had big pockets all along the crown, I could quite figure out why these would be there, but then looked a bit deeper and discovered the inside of these pockets were little inner-tubes, designed to hold water. I couldn’t imagine why a person would want to have a ring of water around his head, but then figured that it must be for cool water specifically on hotter working days. Other hats, looked like banker’s visors that could be tilted down past the eye level. The hat that Nido appeared to favor the most was what I would describe as a flat cap, like a golfer’s hat, only not poofy but rather a humble looking thing. This seemed like a quaint and yet charming hat for an older man like Nido to wear. Though there were no tags in this hat and it appeared to be made by Nido, the only thing unusual about it was how soft and comfortable it was when putting it on.
The hats seemed to get more and more fanciful as I ran across them until I started to realize that Nido must have loved to dress up, or at least to make fancy costumes. I started to see that Nido either had made or collected fancy costumes from many different places. These could be cultural, or otherwise. First I noticed a Russian fur hat that might have been issued in the Soviet Army. The next thing I noticed was a tricorn, and I later found a matching Georgian suit to match it. Whether Nido himself wore these or even would fit into them, I can’t quite be sure, save to say that all the suits seemed to be roughly the same size. The bigger question I was coming to ask myself was how much of the stuff I’d seen both here and everywhere in the house did Nido himself create? How much time could he simply devote to making things, not including just thinking about them and working out all the kinks. I came to the conclusion that he was a very talented person, and that since he had nothing else to occupy his time, he must have had a lot more free time to work with these things. He had no distractions like television, or perhaps even the radio to make him sit and take a break. He had no people coming over, or even calling to really keep him from his work. As for the work itself, it appeared that he had an unstopping work ethic, that would go from project to project. I wouldn’t say that he made everything at his house himself, but he definitely did most of it. I found myself wondering why a man would do that? Why would he set himself aside simply to create things that another person may or may never see, but that other person would see these things in Nido’s lifetime, wasn’t he proud of what he had done and wanted to show someone?
It appeared Nido didn’t really have a great deal of pride, he put no tag on his clothes, and didn’t really mark any of his work, I assumed that when Nido walked through his house, he knew what he had made and what he hadn’t. It wasn’t about bragging rights to say how much he had done, it was simply about the work and the devotion to skill and craftsmanship, and perhaps moreover it was about the accomplishments that a person could do in his lifetime if he simply has the focus and the tenacity to do it. There was a lot I now realized I could learn from Frazer, but something that really stuck out in my mind was why would a man paint things and create elaborate costumes simply for his own eyes to see and no one else? Specifically my mind kept racing back to the painting in the anteroom of the house, what was it’s purpose what did it express to its composer? I could guess. One question I did have that was more specific to this area was, how did Nido possibly clean all of these clothes? It was a very rudimentary and perhaps even mundane question, but one that was mystifying all the same. The answer was perhaps not as imaginative as I’d expected, but it was clever all the same. He appeared to have a normally laundry room next to the wardrobe and in it stood a machine about a meter and a bit wide by about two meters or so high. It looked like it was composed of two basic machines, like a standard washer/dryer mix. This however was slightly different in that the part where the washer would go was juxtaposed with where the dryer should go and vice-versa. I don’t quite know how Nido rigged this go to the opposite of how it was obviously designed, but what I found more interesting than anything was that putting the clothes in the washer, it would tilt back and spin the clothes within.
Attached to the washer to come in during the rinse cycle, liquid soap was set up to come in as needed, there were apparently electronic sensors built to adjust the levels of bleach and detergent for the right colors and amount of cloth being washed. After a given load would complete its cycle in the washing machine, it would then dump through some trap doors on the bottom of the washing machine to the dryer below. The dryer was similarly automated to always put drying sheets in and adjust for the right time depending on the material being dried. After it would finish, there was a convenient little stand Nido had obviously constructed for the exclusive design of folding laundry. This stand I thought was almost more fascinating than the elaborate mechanical devices of the washer and dryer. In this simple stand there was a hanger dispenser, a rack to fold things on comfortable, a spring loaded stand to raise the laundry to a comfortable level for folding. There was even a shoot designed to take the laundry directly from the washer to the stand so that Nido could hang things up to dry if he chose that instead, so as to save energy or to get a better odor from the clothes. Now I would not normally be so fascinated by another man’s laundry, or even my own, but what inventiveness and ingenuity goes into anything, it gets me riled up to mention these things. It was about at this point that I wanted to check and see if Nido had an outside clothesline that maybe had some neat properties to it. I went outside to explore and find what I could, leaving Kelly behind in the wardrobe.
I found two polls of a triangular shape standing outside with a box covering them. I opened the box and found a series of buttons. I pressed the first button and out like a bullet toward the other poll shot three beams. and promptly attached themselves creating the clotheslines I’d been seeking. On the clotheslines were marks and even little divots that marked where the best spot to hang the laundry would be. Pressing another button I was a little shocked to see a series of mirrors essentially surrounding the bottom side of the laundry lines. I assumed this was meant to utilize the power of the sun for all sides of the laundry not just the angle it happened to be shining down from. Pressing another button I found a set of doors that went by previously unnoticed opened. I walked inside and found what I would simply describe as Nido’s cellar.
