From its birthplace in the atmosphere of Harvard junior fellows in the thirties (subsequently renowned mathematicians in several fields obsessed with a proof of the four-color theorem) to Waterloo in the early sixties and then back to Cambridge at M.I.T. in the late sixties, the early years of matroid theory (aka "combinatorial geometries") are evoked. The birth and recent results of the Tutte polynomials are given, all with various memories of my and my students personal story.