>>He probably solved the problem soon, or just trained himself and his sons that it's never too far if you get going earlier.
>
>Tell him to get a paintbrush and buy a new white suite, and get with the 21st century.

This was '91, when the choices were rapidly growing scarce, with all the wars etc. Besides, the prevalent style of everything else was either plain white or in screaming decorative colors.

Nowadays, I wish any of those were available here. It's very hard to find plain white (white-ish only, and aptly named - "ish" being our word for "shoo"), and the decoration police keeps close watch on any saturated colors. Anything, half-grey, mixed down to a drab, creamy, pastel, puree, mesh or whatever you may call it, just no saturated colors, period. Not in this country.

Just look at my hometown - a pic gallery of some guy at http://flickr.com/photos/miltank/show/ and look at the colors of the kiosks, lampposts, or the roof exit door on the last pic before he goes b/w - you will not find such colors in public places here, nor in anything that's on the market, for sale or rent. People simply got scared into thinking that it's impossible to sell anything that's brightly colored (except in few special places - look Richmond, VA on Google maps, find Main street east and take a street view).

So everything is gray, grayish, creamy or whatever. Last year they started making cars in nice colors - but I still see new gray ones. BTW, the most stupid argument for such non-colors was "one can't see when it's dirty" - I prefer "nice car, why don't you wash it" to a car that looks like dirt, clean or not.