Frankie,

My experience agrees with that of Benjammin. Suspenders were used to keep our pants up. I have spent many hours on poles during the winter around the Great Lakes. We used heavy military surplus Swedish, Norwegian, or Finish double wool pants that had a pair of wind proof shorts between the layers of wool. If your pants started to slip, there was no way to tighten your pants belt once you were in your safety belt. When you are up a pole on spikes without those inter wind proof shorts, the lake wind would penetrate the wool fabric and quickly chill your femoral arteries. Before you knew it, your legs were absolutely useless, if you make it down the pole, you could hardly crawl let alone walk to your truck, then you could barely work the clutch, gas, or brake pedals. Boy, those were the days.