The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 14)

p> Oh my, what I wouldn't give to have President Bush tell anyone that does not want to become part of America, by learning English and believing in our values, to get on the next boat out. Someone needs the backbone to say "love it or leave it." Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out. br> -- Elaine Kyle /p> p> KNOT SO br> Re: Larry Thornberry's The Ties That Choke : /p>

I can commiserate a bit with Larry and his dread for ties. I went through 12 years of tie indoctrination at St. Bernard's grade school and Notre Dame High School back in PA. It didn't matter what time of year it was, if you were in school, you wore a tie. The only relief came in hot weather when we could wear short sleeve shirts. But it was even worse for the girls with those funky uniforms AND completely buttoned up long sleeve shirts. Talk about suffering.

But I learned to love the tie when I had to work as a welder/fitter in Idaho. What an ugly job. Sure, you could go to work in blues jeans and whatever shirt you wanted, and if you wore the proper protective leather clothes, maybe they wouldn't get burned up with you in them. I learned about the real dangers of smoking when I was welding deep inside a large metal structure (part of a drag line crane we were building) and the matches in my shirt pocket caught fire due to a rather determined spark. Never moved so fast in my life…

But the job was very dirty. You came home every stinking day filthy dirty, to the point that you couldn't scrub the dirt out of your pores with a brush. After a few years, I got to thinking fondly of a job that required a tie.

I'm an engineer now, and the office rules (if any exist), are to dress casually but professionally. Only engineers can make sense of a requirement like that, and even some of them fail. So I only wear ties with long sleeve shirts during cold periods. I can compromise.

p>I still think there's something weird about the power of ties. Depending on how expensive a tie is, it can actually cause something spilled to go on either the tie (expensive tie, cheap shirt) or the shirt (expensive shirt, cheap tie). Maybe Larry can do a follow up...

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