Last week my wife, Julia, discovered a number of my 90 ties had moth holes in them and asked me if she could get rid of them. I misunderstood her and said, “Yes. No one wears ties anymore. I’ll never wear them again.” The misunderstanding was that I thought she was referring to the moth-eaten ties but she thought I meant all 90 ties.

Julia culled out a dozen ties she thought I might wear on more formal occasions and took all the remaining ties to Housing Works, a local charity store, which was a perfectly reasonable and practical solution. The next day, I opened my closet doors and was confronted with a horrifying sight, a sight I hadn’t seen in 75 years–empty tie racks.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with a rush of sadness, emptiness and desperation. Where were my ties?

Where was the wool Polo tie that I wore when I had my official photo taken the day I started in 1967 as Eastern Sales Manager of CBS Radio Spot Sales? For ten years I had dreamed of being with the Tiffany Network in a management job. The reason the tie meant so much was that it was a symbol of the culture at CBS in the late ’60s and early 70s when you were judged largely by how you dressed and managed up. If you dressed like Broadcast Group President, Jack Schneider (Polo and Paul Stuart ties, Brooks Brother’s, Polo and Paul Stuart suits and wing-tip Oxfords, Brooks Brother’s tassel loafers or Gucci loafers). Schneider had followed the elegant, preppie dress code set by former CBS president James Aubrey.

The creative people called us “suits,” but it could just as easily have been “ties” because ties were the immediate and most visible element of an outfit.

I was hired as Eastern SalesManager of CBS RSS by the elegant, dapper, very smart Russ Barry, the newly appointed Vice President in charge of RSS as part of a shakeup of the CBS Radio division, and it was my task to fire half of a ten-person sales department and hire more aggressive, younger salespeople. The first salesperson I hired was Herb McCord, a Dartmouth graduate. Russ and I had both gone to Dartmouth, so hiring based on an “old school tie” seemed like a safe bet.

The second salesperson I hired was Norm Feuer, who was a friend of Herb’s at Time, Inc. Norm was not an Ivy Leaguer or preppie. He was the first Jew hired in sales in the CBS Radio Division and dressed like a mechanic. But Norm was really smart and tough and competitive, and I felt he would do well. The first day he reported to work, what was the first thing I did after introducing him to the office staff? We walked to Paul Stuart and I bought him a tie. That was the culture. That was why I wanted to remember that Polo tie, to remind me of a bygone, outmoded culture where I was successful in a dream job for a dream company in 1967.

Another tie I missed was a plain yellow Polo tie with no stripes designs on it that I wore to my daughter, Crickett’s, and my son, Chris’s, weddings in Cape Cod. I love Crickett and Chris and had a ball at their weddings and receptions. The yellow tie, even though I never remember wearing it after those weddings, reminded me of those delightful full-family gatherings. To me, it was the tie that binds.

I had an elegant grey-navy blue-and-silver checked Polo tie that I wore on one of the happiest days of my life–the day married Julia. I loved looking at that tie and being reminded of that day.

I had an elegant orange Ferragamo silk tie that I bought for $125 when I was at AOL in 1998. Even though AOL’s Chairman Steve Case was often criticized in the press for appearing in public dressed informally in khakis and an open-neck shirt and set the style for informal dress for internet executives that is still extant today, AOL President Bob Pittman typically dressed elegantly for public appearances. Bob gave a speech in AOL’s New York offices in 1998 wearing a beautiful orange Ferragamo tie. Remembering my CBS days, the next day I bought that tie. I loved looking at that tie and being reminded of my very happy, productive days at AOL where I made some of my still closest friends and, most important, met Julia.

Thus, those ties were memories, were triggers for positive reminisces. I realized that in a time of home-bound COVID isolation, a time of right-wing, Trumpist Republicans threatening democracy, a time of a war in Ukraine, a time of inflation and a time of old age, we need positive memory triggers.

We need our ties to and of the past.

Julia was kind enough to retrieve the ties and, thus, bring back the triggers for triumphs and joys past. I need those ties.