{"id":4460,"date":"2017-03-01T16:53:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T16:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kelolandblogs.com\/lundatlarge\/?p=4460"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:00","slug":"lets-tie-one-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/lets-tie-one-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Tie One On"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the summer of 1965, one of my jobs at Cotton & Company grain elevator in \u00a0Volga was to stuff 100 pounds of fluffy oat hulls into burlap bags..stitch them shut with a huge suspended sewing machine..stack them up five high on a wooden cart and wheel them into the warehouse.\u00a0\u00a0Next to scooping out moldy grain from underneath the truck hoist, it was the dustiest, dirtiest job the place had to offer.\u00a0\u00a0I made a vow that, if I ever got out of there, I\u2019d never work anywhere again that didn\u2019t require a tie.\u00a0It was\u00a0one of the few promises I managed to keep in my lifetime.<\/header>\n

Since retiring, though,\u00a0I haven\u2019t felt the need or had the compulsion to wear a necktie more than\u00a0a couple times. (Weddings and funerals) It\u2019s a good thing, too, because the hundred or so\u00a0I still have in the house, which Linda has neatly folded, boxed up and stored away, are apparently as out of date as the ones my uncle Abe used to wear with the flying pheasant or Mt. Rushmore scenes on them. Now, I\u2019m noticing guys on TV, especially the late night talk show hosts, are starting to sport those plain old boring mono-colored skinny ties again just like my cousin Grouse and I used to wear when we were trying to look and sound like the\u00a0Everly-Brothers\u00a0in the early 60\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0They certainly didn\u2019t require nearly as much material as during the\u00a070\u2019s when ties got as wide as Orson Wells\u2019 underpants.\u00a0You needed special training to tie the knot which wound up as big as the head of a Siamese cat.
\nThings settled down during the Reagan years; mostly medium-width, calm colors and conservative stripes.It was during this time that Keloland weatherman, Dave Dedrick, came up with one of the most brilliant promotional campaigns in the station\u2019s history.<\/header>\n
As a joke, Dave and his friend, Gary Hartenhoff, would exchange the most god-awful looking ties they could find for Christmas\u2026daring each other to wear them in public.\u00a0Always up for a challenge, Dedrick put his on during the weather show and told viewers if they had a tie that was any uglier, they should send it in and he\u2019d wear it on TV too.\u00a0Well, horrid ties of all descriptions and sizes started arriving at the station by the hundreds.\u00a0People would make it a point to tune in..just to find out which ugly tie Dave was wearing that night.\"tie_ugly(1)\"<\/a>
\nWhen the ugly tie contest finally ended two years later, nearly three thousand had been received. The title of most ugly was\u00a0awarded to the\u00a0one that had images of sewer rats all over it.
\nMost of those ugly ties ended up as\u00a0things of beauty thanks to\u00a0the gentle hands of church ladies\u2019 sewing clubs who transformed them into colorful warm quilts which were\u00a0auctioned off for charity.
\nDuring the 90\u2019s, neckwear fashion changed again with Rush Limbaugh, of all people, leading the way.\u00a0The\u00a0more wild and colorful\u00a0the better.<\/header>\n
In the 2000’s, \u00a0styles became rather modest by neckwear standards;\u00a0 pretty much any width or color was okay.<\/header>\n
Until now, that is.<\/header>\n
I still like the ones I have but maybe I\u2019ll have to break down and go buy a couple of those Jimmy Fallon narrow jobs.\u00a0<\/header>\n
I hear they have a slimming effect.<\/header>\n
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 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1965, one of my jobs at Cotton & Company grain elevator in \u00a0Volga was to stuff 100 pounds of fluffy oat hulls into burlap bags..stitch them shut with a huge suspended sewing machine..stack them up five high on a wooden cart and wheel them into the warehouse.\u00a0\u00a0Next to scooping out moldy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lund-at-large","category-60","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11520,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions\/11520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}