Tube socks, striped

Fashion Synopsis

Somewhere, over the rainbow, were your knees.

Whether on the baseball mound, at the roller rink, or playing kickball on the playground, you had to have the athletic tube socks with the rainbow-striped tops. The tall, thick tubes of white cotton hugged your calves, and were topped off by two or three rings of colored stripes. Sometimes it was one color in the multi-stripe, but the most righteous was each stripe a different color. That way you were guaranteed to match your colored 'swoosh' Nikes.

In super stretch cotton, the tube sock offered much-needed protection to the delicate shin. In the heat of summer, this sock sweater could get to be too warm, and if so, the coolest was to roll your tube socks down into a big donut around your ankles. By carefully pushing and rolling the fabric, the former knee socks would be a big bulky roll around your ankle. Now that was hot, and cool!