WYOMING MAN REFUSES PANTS

AFTON-Albert Hoyne of Afton, Wyoming, has been on a no-pants streak for 113 days now, and has no intention of stopping.

   "Those conformist sheep can eat my red polka-dot shorts," declared Hoyne, 46, an assistant manager at a local Jiffy Lube. "As long as I ain't exposin' nothin' unseemly, there ain't no law that says I have to wear no pants."

   Hoyne has been feeling the breeze for nearly four months now, says Jimmy DuPree, a co-worker. "He just shows up one morning in his BVD's, you know, and it's like 25 degrees out. We all were kind of looking at him funny, I mean, Duh, you know, and he just stares at us and goes "What?" Then he pops a hood and starts checking oil."

   "I'll put my levi's back on when they strap me to a table and force them on my cold dead legs," declared Hoyne, "What times do we live in when you can't even enjoy the cool refrain of Mother Nature? This is America, for Pete's sake!"

   The genesis of this peculiar social statement seems to have began as a result of a minor spat between Hoyne and his wife Georgia. "That worthless slug would come home about 6pm every night and flip on 'Baywatch,' she said in a telephone interview, "by the time he finished the dinner I fixed, he'd be crashed out and nearly unconscious. I said that if he wanted me to do my part, he'd have to do his. He says, 'what you gonna do, woman?' So I stopped washing his pants."

   In a stubborn standoff, there appears to be no clear winner. "She thinks she can push me into cuttin' grass or somethin', " says Hoyne, "well, we'll see who cracks first. I don't need no pants, and I gots plenty of money for new drawers."