About

My love of watches began when I was about 11 when I was fascinated by the Casio alarm watches that would sell in the Mervyn’s catalog.  They had the date, and an alarm and you could even set it to beep every hour.  They also came out with the calculator watches which I didn’t think were that cool.  My parents gave me a basic alarm and date watch which I didn’t wear for very long but just liked to have it. 

A handful of years after that I walked into my friend Mikey’s bedroom and he showed me his new Guess Brand dress watch.  I though it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.  I bought that watch off him for $ 40.00.  I wore it for awhile on and off and finally lost interest in it.  I would spend hours trying to get it open and replacing the battery, that I do remember.  The last time I did it in my 20’s I had to hammer the case-back back on with my fist and maybe the back of a large screwdriver with a rag on the case-back for padding  because it was the softest way I could figure out to do it.  I finally did get it closed that time and then didn’t wear it for very long anyway.

When my Dad died, he left me a nice watch case with about 20 watches in it. There was a nice Tommy Bahama, and 3 or 4 vintage watches, a couple were Benrus dress watches, a Longines Gold Watch and a Waltham casual every day watch, most of these had flex-type bracelets on them.  I tried them on and they felt great.  They looked so old and different.  As I studied them I began to remember my grandfather wearing a few of them.  He would always wear a watch, even after he retired from work.  You see, my grandfather had a weekly walking schedule in his life and several walking partners that he developed over the years of that habit.  Another thing he did was to visit friends and neighbors when they were sick and in the hospital to chat with them and try to bring their spirits up, and he always had to be home for lunch or dinner!  So I remember he always had a watch on, one of those very thin ones that I was now holding in my hand, feeling so comfortable when I put it on.

Now only one of those watches still ran.  It was a Waltham wind-up watch which had an hour hand, a minute hand and a sub-seconds hand, which means there is a little tiny extra dial down at the 6 o’clock area with a tiny little seconds hand going around and around.

To be continued….