MY VIEW
In throw-away world, old ties remind, bind
Updated: 09/03/08 6:28 AM
What do you do with 96 neckties? That’s the question that faced my husband when he retired after almost 40 years in education where, while a suit coat was largely optional, tie wearing was not.
His solution was to pick five for future use as needed — though, in all honesty, he said “if” needed — then either donate or dump the rest. I, however, balked. I just couldn’t do either.
Yes, I’m an inveterate saver, reuser, recycler, a fact to which our garage and basement, for better or worse, attest. I kept musing: Throw away all that beautifully colored and patterned fabric interwoven with memories? No way!
Ah, the memories. There are the explosively colorful ties boasting floral and vegetable motifs, bought while browsing at the seed catalog business formerly located in Fredonia. We loved to browse
there. And the sartorial splendor we found! Not everyone has a black with green pea pods tie or one adorned with sunflowers almost blindingly bright and cheery.
And here are the “Save the Children” ties that family and fellow staff members often gave as gifts because the elementary school kids reacted so positively to the playful unstuffiness of such attire on the principal.
Wow. There’s the Three Stooges tie boasting Curly, Larry and Moe in all their glory, a veritable comedic Mount Rushmore rendered in fabric. Oodles of red and green neckwear bespeak holiday cheer while others boast pumpkins and rabbits and hearts and heritage green shamrocks.
Many ties feature the wonderful Walt Disney characters, which now have even more meaning since it was at Disney World that one daughter recently became engaged. And disposing of all those ties where endangered species are captured in perpetuity seems like a duplication of tragedy.
And who can forget the artsy “American Gothic” tie or that delightfully oxymoronic Jerry Garcia tie? Then, of course, there are the usual plain-Jane, ho-hum, solid, stripe, paisley and plaid ties. Some get wide and wider; others thin and thinner.
Whew! That’s a lot of ties! These ties trace a life and a career. These ties reflect a culture. How sad so many of them went the way of the wind over the years. We are, I’m afraid, to our own detriment, at times too much of a throw-away society.
These ties, I decided, would not be thrown or given away. Options were examined. Then, with a scissors, a sewing machine and my most minimal of sewing skills, I forged ahead. The result? Something that met all my criteria: No one need wear it. It will be used. It won’t fall prey to use or abuse by family pets. And it won’t need a lot of dry cleaning. I made a Christmas tree skirt.
Making it was a breeze and we, especially my husband, enjoy revisits with the ties and the memories of people and places they hold. The hard part will be in the future. The hard part will be when one day it will have to be decided as to which of our children the family heirloom will be passed. Think we’ll leave it to them to decide.
For now, each of them will have their own mini ties-that-bind wall hanging in the form of a framed quilt square using up all those narrow ends of all those ties.
My hope is that these ties that remind will also always be ties that bind. That they will be ties that bind generations and memories, reminding all of the importance of family and of hard work in life, as well as the importance of fun, creativity, color, humor and, sometimes, just sometimes, the positive side of saving things.
