Question
Blue Jeans
“An American classic” is a(n) (1) phrase, overused to describe everything from meatloaf to the latest hairstyle. But at least one thing has a(n) (2) right to be called an American classic. Blue jeans were born in the United States during the great California gold rush of 1849. They were created by Levi Strauss, a German who sold dry goods to the cowboys and gold miners of San Francisco. Strauss realized that the (3) of all those workingmen created an opportunity for him. He considered what all those miners and cowboys would be likely to buy, and he was (4) enough to realize that they needed tough, inexpensive pants. He founded the Levi Strauss Company to manufacture what he called “waist trousers.” At first, the (5) company did make a few mistakes. For instance, it placed a copper rivet at the jeans’ crotch, where the main seams came together. When cowboys wearing the jeans sat around the campfire, that copper rivet heated up, making getting back into the saddle a painful experience. But such mistakes were few, and Levi Strauss’s pants became so popular that they soon (6) almost every other kind of pants among the workingmen of the West. Strauss was able to retire and live in (7). Since then, the general public has developed such a(n) (8) for blue jeans that they have never gone out of style. However, they have been constantly changed by the (9), never-ending tides of fashion. During the 1950s, teenagers wore them straight and tight. In the 1960s, the look was (10) bell-bottoms that swept the ground. Since then jeans have been tie-dyed, acid-washed, ripped, cut off, and made of every imaginable material. Still, they all have a common ancestor: the tough “waist trousers” invented by Strauss nearly two centuries ago.
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