The Adventures Of Leather. My Favorite Thing In The World Took A Walk Around The Globe Without Me.

With the anticipated release of Tom Cruise's new Top Gun, Maverick, I the original movie fondly. The times were much simpler and the movie really made Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise into household names. The music from the movie became popular and Take My Breathe Away was on every mixed tape a teenage boy made a girl.

We all wanted to be Pete Mitchell for a time. Every guy that wore one of those jackets liked the crotch rockets, drove them too fast, wore tee shirts, jeans, and boots. We all wanted to be the hero of our stories, getting the girl in the process, saving the world from bad guys. It all looked so attractive, the lifestyle of a fighter pilot, or even just a soldier.

During my sophomore year in high school, my girlfriend bought me one of my all-time favorite things. A brown leather jacket with military patches on the arms, the chest, and the back. Sound familiar? It should. It was the popular style after the release of Top Gun. If you had that jacket you wore a white tee-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers.

One day I went to school and wore this special edition jacket. At the end of the day, I met with shock, heartbreak, betrayal, and a feeling of being violated.

My jacket was stolen, gone, vanished, missing from my locker and there were no easy answers. For a time every single one of those jackets looked like it was on a potential suspect. It remained a mystery, for over a year. I'd thought of everything I could and even got the police involved. There were simply no clues and certainly, nobody stepping up, to tell the truth. So, like it or not, I had to move on.

My jacket made it a lot farther from Galesburg Illinois than I would have imagined it would. When it made it back to Galesburg I was treated to the stories of where it had been for that past year and change.

From a small town that at the time had around thirty-seven-thousand people that jacket had the time of its' life. It made it to San Diego and did in fact spend time on a Navy Base. It spent about six months there as it turned out, on a petty officer named Tim. While it was with Tim, stationed in San Diego at Coronado, it made some very interesting side trips. From San Diego, it went to Texas with its' temporary guardian, something about a one-week pass and partying in Dallas. The biggest jump though was perhaps its' most interesting one.

After leaving the west coast, Tim was sent to Guam. Imagine that, this one piece of replica wear that I ever owned, made it from a locker in a small-town high school in west-central Illinois, to San Diego, and all the way to Guam.

It was in the winter of my junior year that I was out with a friend and having a particularly good time. In enters the newest edition to our social circle, a guy named Tim. Tim was older, in his early twenties, and in the Navy. He was back on leave and out with a friend that was younger, someone he was trying to convince to sign up. As we were sitting there, listening to the pitch he was giving about how great his life had been the past couple of years since signing up with the Navy, I couldn't help but notice the jacket he was wearing. It looked exactly like the one I had.

Tim got up and left and our mutual friend asked me what my issue was. I told him I was just distracted by the jacket and how one got stolen from me. I hadn't thought about it for a while and didn't realize until that night how much it still bothered me. After that conversation with Jay, I made myself scarce. The following week we were all back at the same establishment and Jay found me.

Tim wanted to talk to me, he tells me as he motioned for the big guy to come over. I immediately thought, crap I offended him by talking about the one I had stolen. To my surprise, he asks me if I know a particular young woman.

"An old girlfriend of mine gave this to me before I left for my first school. I had no idea until this week that she'd stolen it. She admitted the whole thing."

From Galesburg to San Diego, onto Dallas then Guam, this jacket had seen so much more of the world than I'll probably ever see. I got to know Tim a little bit that day and learned a little about some of the other places around the country he'd been. He'd worn that jacket on a motorcycle trip across the states when he went out to San Diego. It'd been to the Grand Canyon, Vegas, seen the arches in St. Louis, a 49ers game in person, and attended a number of concerts. It'd been to Hawaii, to Bangkok, to Tokyo, and spent a lot of time in Guam and bouncing around the Mariana Islands

Oddly enough the jackets' adventures weren't over, at least not yet. A year and a half later, while finishing my senior year in school, it went on one last hurrah! We all had that friend in our youth that got into something bad, right? Well, my best friend in the world fell on some hard times and made some bad decisions. When he was faced with having to do some time in the Illinois Department Of Corrections, his initial fight or flight response leaned to flight. I wasn't exactly an angel so when he disappeared from the area, jumping bail, the cops came looking for me. They were certain I knew where he ran off to since we were almost always together.

After being gone for about nine months, much to my "surprise", he turned up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and got himself arrested. The shift lieutenant called me at home one day, after graduation, and asked if I'd like to come to retrieve some property. His name was Rod McCants and he wasn't a bad guy. I still to this day correspond with him over Facebook. I should mention he was my internship coordinator when I was in college, interning with my hometown department. Anyway, I digress.

Rod had my jacket. He told me that my buddy asked them for one thing when he got back to our local jail. Give the jacket back to its' owner and tell him I'm sorry. Rod asked me the story behind the jacket. I told him that it'd seen more of this world than either of us. After getting to know Rod, I found out I was right.

Around the world and back, that leather patched replica from the movies had one hell of a ride before it came home.