Maine East Ski Club Patch (Ski & Crutch) — c. 1960s-70s

A vintage Maine East Ski Club patch, estimated to date from the 1960s or 70s, round on a white ground inside a black merrowed border — MAINE EAST stacked at the left, SKI CLUB at the right, and crossed in the middle a blue ski and a yellow crutch.

A crutch. Crossed with a ski, on the club's own emblem, ordered on purpose and worn in public. Every other patch in this catalog is selling you the idea that skiing is glorious. This one is the only object in the collection that tells the truth about it, and the club that commissioned it clearly enjoyed doing so.

Club patches outnumber resort patches and get collected about a tenth as often, which is a mistake that works in your favor. The clubs filled the lifts. They organized the buses, negotiated the group rates and got entire towns of people onto a mountain who would never have gone on their own.

A resort patch tells you a place existed. A club patch tells you how people got there.

Crossed skis and a club name is about as plain as patch design gets, and it has held up better than most of what came after it.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.