I had just stepped out of the car as John and Val Bowman pulled up,

I was back in Champaign in Downstate Illinois. It was June of 1987.

I was visiting by best friend Jack Vaughn who was the driver that day. Jack had moved to Champaign to work for a former boss of ours, John Bowman, who had been publisher of The Press-Tribune in Roseville.

As Val looked at me, she cracked a smile and said, “This will be fun.”

I asked what she meant, and Val replied “you’ll see.”

The Bowmans had invited us to have lunch with them at the Champaign Country Club.

As we entered the country club and walked past a bar that made the one in the movie “Caddyshack” look like something you’d find in a dive bar in a Third World Country, there was an extremely loud gasp.

I turned my head and there was a woman — perhaps in her 50s — dressed to the nines with her mouth agape, clutching Barbara Bush style pearls with one hand while trying not to tip a martini glass she was placing back on the bar with her other hand.

Both John and Val were grinning like The Cheshire Cat.

After we were seated, I asked what that was about.

The Bowmans — Midwest transplants to California who had returned to Illinois but eventually returned to the Golden State that they had fallen for heads over heels — explained the woman was the wife of a prominent surgeon who happened to be president of the country club.

They went on to say a lot of people in the club gave new meaning to the term “pretentious.”

While assuring me repeatedly that they had no problem with it, they said the woman’s reaction was to my attire.

For the record, a month before I flew to Illinois for a week’s vacation Angelo Tsakopolous — a businessman-developer — had invited me to join him for lunch at his Sacramento country club to conduct an interview.

Tsakopolous chided me for being overdressed. I was wearing a suit and tie. Scanning the room, it was clear that I was overdressed.

What I decided to wear that day in Illinois was not much different than what many had been wearing at the Sacramento County club. I had on a light-colored pair of Dockers, boat shoes, and a semi-Hawaiian — yet subdued — pastel shirt.

Several days earlier, I went to a “make up” meeting of what Jack called “the young man’s Rotary Club” of Champaign as opposed to the “older” club that was laden with community power brokers.

Given it was 90 degrees and 80 percent humidity, I opted to dress in the manner of Rotarians that attended Lincoln Rotary Club meetings while vacationing during the summer. That meant dress shorts and a conservative pullover similar to a golf shirt.

When I entered the room, I noticed a sea of suits except for another gentleman from Indiana who was on vacation and was wearing Bermuda dress shorts and a pullover.

Jack introduced me to one gentleman decked out in a suit who owned an independent hardware store. I remember thinking to myself my dad — who owned a hardware store — never wore a suit to work. Instead it was a pair of nice work dress pants and a causal shirt that was usually in plaid.

When guests were asked to introduce themselves, I stood up. I said my name, said I was a member of the Lincoln Rotary from California, and mentioned I was the incoming club president.

Did I mention I was not wearing Bermuda-style dress shorts but dressy Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts with a solid watermelon-colored golf-style shirt?

The club president asked me to clarify whether I said Nebraska or California. When I replied “California” he said “that figures, that’ll be a $20 fine” and slammed down the gavel.

After a few seconds but what seemed like an eternity, he apologized saying they don’t fine guests. He added that he had gotten carried away reading the news that morning that the U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously upheld a lower court decision that Rotary International had to restore the charter they yanked from a California Rotary club after they admitted female members.

This happened to be the same day newspapers carried a story of an employee of SeaFirst Bank in Seattle when was fired for refusing to validate a customer’s parking garage ticket.

The customer had completed a transaction and left the bank but returned when he realized he hadn’t had his parking ticket validated. He walked up to a desk and asked to have his ticket validated.

He was wearing work boots, dirty jeans, and a construction shirt. The woman — after laughing at him — said they only validated parking tickets for customers.

The man left the bank, got into his truck, picked up one of those prehistoric brick-sized mobile phones, called the bank president, told him what had happened adding while he was usually dressed in business attire when banking he had no desire to bank any longer where it was clear his workers would be looked down on, informed him he wanted a cashier’s check for all of his money on deposit that was in excess of $1 million, and took his business elsewhere.

My vacation in Illinois taught me two things. People are judgmental when it comes to the clothes you wear. At the same time many of those who sit in judgment are often using foreign yardsticks.

It wasn’t too many years ago — OK, 55 years or so but who’s counting — a trip to San Francisco aka “The City” had families dressing up as if they were the Cleaver family on “Leave it to Beaver” going to church.

Suits and ties are clearly less prevalent today even in many upper echelon corporate levels.

There was a time I was required to wear a suit and tie even when I was covering baseball games in mid-May when I was the sports editor in Roseville.

At one time I had five suits. Those days are long gone. I believe I gave my last tie to Goodwill a decade ago.

I’ll wear shorts whenever I can.

But I’m covering a meeting or interviewing someone its khaki pants, a short-sleeve dress shirt, and shoes that don’t aggravate my bunions that I used to torture non-stop wearing wingtip shoes.

Although I go sans tie I always button the collar button.

Every once in a while I’m asked by someone wearing a necktie why I button the collar as it didn’t make sense to them to do so when you aren’t wearing a tie.

For whatever reason, it makes me feel I’m “dressed”.

When I gave that reply awhile back to someone I had just met, he replied it was a sign I was a slave to conformity.

I took one look at his cinched up tie — a piece of clothing that has no practical purpose except for an assailant perhaps trying to choke you to death with it — and just smiled.