My first tie was white. It was for my first Communion, a Catholic ceremony where even the very poor get to shine.
Everything in a Catholic ceremony is white — socks, shirt, rosary and personal Bible. It’s something, I think, to do with purity.
Next was my Confirmation. That’s where you get a saint’s name, in case the first one didn’t take. As I was still pure, I wore a white tie again. My sister Rita had to tie it for me.
My “dress up” outfits as a child were all about jackets, with the big collar of a neat white shirt folded out over the coat. School days were T-shirts and shorts. Simple days.
Ties have always been the standard gift for all occasions: Christmases, birthdays, mitzvahs, both bar and bat.
Your wife, mother, or girlfriend just went to the store, grabbed a tie and put it under the tree.
One Christmas in Japan, my mother sent me a tie with pipes and hunting dogs on it. True story.
There were the ties for the weddings, four of my brothers, two for my sisters’ weddings.
Somehow they were all standard navy blue silks, and all came off at the open bar.
Alan Powers, a movie usher, loaned me his snap-on bowtie for Mary Lister’s junior prom. There’s a handsome photo of that night somewhere. I wish I had it now.
The Air Force changed everything, from weekly haircuts to daily pressed shirts to the standard blue tie that had to be tucked in over the last button above the belt.
The service meant four boring years of khaki. All girls like guys in uniform, except for prison guards who, I believe, don’t wear ties … or white.
Life in the theater in the ’50s really changed my tie collection. I always kept one in my pocket for commercials and auditions.
J.P. Devine’s tie rack went from black-knit to big paisley swirls, to thin ones with polka dots too wide and extra wide, and back to skinny black-knit, as seen in this photo. Photo courtesy of J.P. Devine
My tie rack went from black-knit to big paisley swirls, to thin ones with polka dots too wide and extra wide, and back to skinny black-knit, like the one in the picture.
My jobs in the hotel world, from the Plaza to the Waldorf, featured the house uniform of blue blazer and dark tie.
Between those jobs, I rented tux complete with a Cary Grant bowtie at the Men’s Fashions counter at Bloomingdale’s Department Store in Manhattan, where I sprayed cologne on shocked passersby. Occasionally, I got slapped.
One day, the advent of turtleneck, casual jacket and short neat haircuts put me on the streets of Manhattan with a cool Steve McQueen swagger.
That led to the black sweater and pea coat of the beatnik era and the Actors’ Studio years, where ties were frowned upon.
If you really needed one for a wedding, you could buy one from the peddler on the corner of 48th Street and 7th Avenue, along with a plastic comb and dollar watch.
When the judge’s daughter I met on the Bloomingdales escalator cleaned up my act and bussed me up to Maine to meet her Republican family, I had to get serious.
It was in that small college town that clothier Howard Miller at Levine’s Men’s Store sold me a Republican seersucker suit, a white shirt, a pair of white bucks and white tie.
You know what? I’m gonna throw that thing away.
Anybody wanna buy a ragged old tie?
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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