Better Watch. Out.

Photo: Adobe Stock

      While at the dentist the other week, I commented to him that it was nice to see a sweep-second clock in his office, the old continuously moving second hand quietly circling the clock face instead of just appearing as digital numbers.  Which is when his daughter walked in. She's helping me today, he told me, explaining that a few workers had called in sick.  She was young, likely early 20s or so, and very friendly, enough so that I felt I could ask her the question almost every Medicare patient receives when having an annual physical at the doc's, that of drawing a clock face and time on a plain piece of paper.  Begin..

 My graduation watch placed against a new model...

     One of the old sweep-second watches I have is a Seiko which my parents got me for my high school graduation.  It was totally unexpected because back in those days, parents at our income level just said congratulations.  In fact, I can't recall any friends of mine getting a gift.  A new car or some elaborate party or a paid vacation was out of the question.  Graduating just meant that it was time to get on with your life, whatever that was: get drafted for the Vietnam War, get a job, go to college, but mainly it signaled that it was time to get out of the house and start making it on your own.  Nonetheless, the watch was beautiful and one I quickly put in a drawer (I was never really one to wear a watch).  Some 40 years later, when visiting my mother, she commented on the beautiful watch and I jokingly remind her that they had given it to me as a gift for graduating...but I had worn it up to see her because it needed a battery.  So we headed off to a tiny shop in a mall, a shop too small to accommodate more than a few customers, and told the owner that we needed a new battery for my watch.  He casually took it, took a second look at the watch, and said that it was a very old Seiko, and that I should not get rid of it.  It was then that I glanced down and saw that his jewelry cases were full of mostly Seiko watches.  And they all looked the same to me.  Fast forward to now and out comes my watch, and me telling my wife that maybe I'd start wearing it again...but it needed a new battery (any watch I have tends to sit in my desk drawer for ages, or until the battery dies).  Off I go to another tiny watch repair shop and he quickly pops off the backing and tells me that my watch is old.  How can you tell, I ask him.  The mechanism inside, he says.  Seiko is one of the few to make only tiny changes to how their watches work.  "This is from the 70s," he says.  A year earlier, I tell him, my graduation gift. 

My dad's old pocketwatch, on the left...

     When my mother passed away some of what I discovered among her things was a small collection of pocket watches.  Apparently my step father enjoyed picking them up now and then, perhaps a reminder of his childhood days when such watches were more available and more generally used.  I told the watch repairman this and he tells me that when the pocket vest went out of fashion (picture the old railroad conductor checking his "watch"), Levi's made their jeans with that tiny side pocket, one designed to hold a watch (thus, the "pocket" watch).  None of the watches my dad had still worked, but a quick peek online showed that many such watches are available and at all price ranges.  All of this brought to mind how little I know about such things.  Telling an old watch from a new one, much less a valuable watch from an ordinary one, would be like me grading an expensive ring or a rare coin.  A watch was a watch, more or less.  When I visited a country where pickpockets were supposedly rampant, I bought a $15 Casio watch that looked beautiful.  I wore it proudly as if it were indeed quite valuable (it too went in my desk drawer once I returned).  I'm told that not only jewelers, but hookers and thieves can readily tell an expensive watch from a cheap one.  One story a friend told me was that of his commercial pilot friend, riding in an elevator while staying at a somewhat cheap hotel.  "That looks like a real Rolex," said the other person in the elevator, to which the pilot proudly beamed,  it is.  "Then hand it over," said the guest/thief, equally beaming.  And that was that...

     Now call me out of touch but see if you recognize any of these brand names: Tudor, Shinola, Vacheron Constantin, Panerai, Bell & Ross, Victorinix.  Okay, try these: Bulgari, and Dior.  If you guessed watch makers, you'd be correct, even those fashion names.  What's missing are those big names from another time, or if they're still there they are cast aside into the world of sub-$500 timepieces.  As one example, the Dior watch making a comeback starts at a measly $13,500.  And the Toric Petite Seconde watch in the photo is bargain-priced at $55,900.  Think of how many $15 Casio watches I could supply to a village, that is IF they were ready to quit relying on such silly things such as listening to their body's circadian rhythms (jokingly said because we in today's world seem to have lost that ability).  Don't forget to change your watch to daylight savings time, and check your fitness doodad.  I joke about that but I have many friends who just have to get in their 10,000 steps, or check their fit-watch to see if they've gotten a good sleep.  What happened to just listening to our bodies?  Do you feel rested?  Do you feel that you did quite a bit of walking today, even if it was just the dog or picking up the kids?  Do you really need to circle the block another couple of times so that your count can make that 10,000 mark?  And if we're going that far, do we really need to wear a watch?  And yes, my watches are still in the drawer...

Timex Indiglo

     It's fairly rare to see a person with an actual watch on these days.  Perhaps the celebrity or the sports star, or even the hedge fund dude who needs to "make" an impression.  But someone wearing a watch to tell the time?  A quick flick of the wrist and your all-in-one digital screen springs to life, ready to pay your bill or send off your resting heartrate to the cloud...oh, and tell you the time, digitally.  Back in my Timex days, the glowing hands of radioactive radium (originally developed for soldiers in WW I) thrilled us, as did the "indiglo" blue/green faces that only took a press of a button.  Then the first LED Pulsar digital watches arrived (worn by an early James Bond); they were quite dim but also quite unique (and usually with only one function: to show the time); but, as one article mentioned, it changed the way we "said" time from "quarter to twelve" to 11:45.  And then came tritium.  Hey, atomic blasts were cool and us ordinary folk, the people, knew next to nothing about radioactive dangers.  A nuclear bomb?  Dive under your desk, we were told in school.  

     Our eyes or bodies may or may not have been affected by this small but constant dose of radiation.  But for the generations after, the safer "blue/green" glow of Timex's Indiglo watches, which turned out to be a near-invisible piece of paper overlayed atop the watch face and lit by a battery light, brought out this reflection in Orion: The glow of that watch face seemed almost to emerge from my skin in the rising dark, sometimes a threat of what would soon be over, other times a faint sign of existence.  We were fireflies, blinking our green little flashbacks and, at the end of every summer, welcoming or protesting the approaching fall with glow sticks we'd cut open and paint with...Usually we'd just splash a little on the side of the shed and smudge our names with our fingers, and then we'd stare at the green, mesmerized, till it inevitably disappeared...Gazing into the recesses of the exposed self, this is what we learned: the lights that illuminate our world are nothing more than the afterimage of what once was stared at for too long.

     I tend to wear a watch on vacation, one with luminescent hands and no glare (such as that from turning on a phone or digital watch).  With blackout curtains closed and my body some 8 hours off of its circadian rhythm, I would "wake" at what I felt was a normal hour, peek at my barely visible watch face, and see that it was time to get up, even if it was one in the morning "back home."  Time for coffee since breakfast would end soon (what???).  But wearing a watch on vacation is a odd thing now that I look at it since that should be the period when you want to get away from thinking about time (unless you're going to miss that boat or plane).  But then glancing around the house, I sometimes think that life is like that: time constantly ticking by and most of us not really wanting to look at it or face it.  Perhaps that is why birthdays diminish in fun as we grow older, as if we don't want to be reminded that another year has passed.  Then a decade.  Then you're at a 20-year or 50-year reunion.  What happened?  How did time and times change so quickly?  

     When I look back at my early years of my 20s, 30s and 40s, I had little thought for wanting or looking forward to "inheriting" my parents' things.  My tastes were different, and I was working on my own life; besides, my parents still had years and years ahead of them...didn't they?   My own world was changing and as it did, my parents seemed more and more stuck in their comfortable world, a world of little change.  That old but sturdy coffee table and that solid maple bed frame?  Who would want those?  I hear such thoughts in my own head now, exhorting to others younger than myself the quality of dovetailed joints and real wood, not engineered veneer.  But alas, it falls on deaf ears for the most part.  A quick peek at the number of auction houses and liquidators shows entire stores facing such changes, desperately trying to unload their goods...sporting goods, art prints, restaurant pans and dishes, cars & trucks, all no longer wanted.  Most of these sites can't be bothered with just the few dozen pieces we individuals may have.  From Walmart to Costco to Amazon, even to the government, one quickly discovers that times change so quickly that pallets of goods are left unsold.  So much for my dad's small collection of pocket watches.

Photo: Pocket Watch database

    It'll cost you around $800, the repair man told me; it's the balance wheel.  He was talking about my dad's Longines pocket watch. A thing of beauty, he called it.  Quickly removing the back, he showed me that it was ticking away, nearly flawless, except that the fine prong on that "wheel" was off kilter.  These wheels don't fail, he told me; this was likely dropped.  To fix it, assuming I can even find the part, would require a lot of work, as in a LOT of work, he told me.  I looked at it closely, picturing myself as one of the few to actually pull out a beautiful pocket watch when asked for the time.  Oh no, he said, this would not be a watch you would wear; this would be an heirloom, something you would pass down to your children.  Just ahead of me, a man had put down several thousand dollars to have two of his "heirloom" pocket watches repaired, all without blinking an eye.  This Longines pocket watch, a brand still in existence, was indeed something that caught your eye.  But $800?  And I didn't have anyone to "pass it on" to...no "heir" to leave an heirloom.

     Still, with the back plate of the pocket watch opened, I was fascinated by its inner workings, its gears and springs dutifully swinging back and forth but not catching on anything.  Gazing at the fine details of the mechanism, I felt a bit like a surgeon peeking inside a body, getting a rare glimpse of a steady beat of a heart.  And I had to think that any of us could look at our lives in the same way, the steady rhythm of time and life moving along in such fine detail, until something begins to wear out or falls out of balance, that green glow fading away into darkness.  So back to my dentist and that sweep second clock on the wall.  He had paused then asked his daughter to show him the time of a quarter to eleven on that sweep-second clock face.  Now it was her turn to pause.  She steadily pointed to the 11, then hesitated for a bit, moved her hand back and forth until she moved it to the 9 and glanced back at her dad.  I could almost hear the sigh of relief from her when he smiled back.  And I held back my own small chuckle since I would probably be equally hesitant if she had asked me to use an Apple or Samsung "watch" to pay the bill.  No clue.  But then, my old windup watch does glow in the dark, I wanted to say.  The world had again changed and there was little need for a watch, or at least a sweep-second watch.  Even a pocket for cash was disappearing, as were coins.  You know, pocket change...but that would be an entirely different story...

Post-election weather forecast: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs...or goofballs.

Addendum: Fear not, for while it was tempting to slant this into a political op-ed about the recent elections, my blasé attitude is that there are winners and there are losers (and also more than a few sore losers from years past).  If you were a Yankee fan voting for Harris, you likely walked away disappointed but ready for work come Monday.  As Hoda Kotb wrote in her book: Don't ruin a good today by thinking about a bad yesterday.  Let it go.  On the other hand, if you were a Dodger fan and voted for Trump, you were likely elated and ready to take the week off.  A few of my conservative friends are filled with glee, as are many fans of the liberal party in the UK (they booted the conservative Tories out after 14 years of rule).  Governments change and wild pendulum swings are merely repeats of historical trends around the world (well, maybe less so in Arabic countries).  The swing right isn't at all unique to the U.S. as evidenced by so many big wins in Europe and elsewhere (such as Portugal)...the incumbent party or person is out.  And this election was nowhere near what happened when Ronald Reagan took 49 out of 50 states, wrote The Conversation, or when George W. Bush won even more votes that Trump did in this election (about 2.4% more).  It would seem that people are simply unhappy in many ways and once again, ready for a change, any change...at least for those who voted (as with historical trends, 35% of people in the US did NOT vote at all in this election, wrote Foreign Policy).  Nothing new here if one views the mood of the world leading to both World Wars; and one need only remember that while the Constitution only gives Congress the power to declare war, many Presidents have simply ignored Congress when declaring war...as in 125 times, wrote Wikipedia.  Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, an article pushed by the US, is even more vague.  The stakes are higher these days (with nuclear weapons) but sanity often prevails.  Sex trafficking, bribery, rape?...the mood now seems to be simply to forgive and forget, no matter the crime as over 50% of women and Latinos voted to put such people in charge (as well as 20% of black voters, according to the latest results).  The majority has spoken.  But then even Santa says, "you'd better watch out."  If you're still feeling in a funk over the results, just test yourself and see if you know what song these lyrics came from: I tried to understand this;  I thought that they were out of their minds.  How could I be so foolish...to not see I was the one behind?  So still I kept on fighting, losing every step of the way (Hey, what'd you do?).  I said, "I must go back there," I got to go back and check to see if things still the same.  Still puzzled?  Take the high road and get upbeat; catch this classic version of the song...you, as with the election's outcome, just may be surprised.

One more: If all of this puzzles you --understanding how small states have nearly as much "power" as large states in the Senate, what a filibuster is, how the heck the Electoral College overrides the popular vote, and on and on and on (it's confusing for most of us, even Constitutional lawyers)-- a quick summary can be found in The New Yorker in an essay that asks if our Constitution is outdated and needs updating, or to be scrapped entirely and rewritten (and why that may be nearly impossible to do).