Most of my adult life I wore a wrist watch; a busy life requires being on time. The Rabbit from Alice In Wonderland knew very well; “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date - not time to say hello goodbye I’m late I’m late I’m late.” I knew all about that but had nothing to lose, they couldn’t fire me. The last year I worked I put my wrist watch in a wooden bowl on my dresser and left it there. Then came cell phones that double as alarm clocks. With smartphones you don’t have to look, just ask and it announces the correct time. Crossing from one time zone to another it switches automatically. So I don’t need a wrist watch and it’s great not having that thing strapped on my wrist.
In 2009 I spent the summer in Seward, Alaska as a volunteer with the National Parks Service. I went to Anchorage where my daughter lived; we went down town to an outdoor flea market. An old man with a Russian name and accent from up the Matanuska Valley had a little tent and table set up with a display of antique pocket watches. They were all ticking and I was charmed. He gave me the short course on antique watches, showed me how to wind and reset them. I bought a gold plated, 17 jewel, Illinois pocket watch and chain. With its back removed you could watch the gears oscillating, layered one on top of another and I couldn’t walk away without it. Now, a decade later I don’t have the 17 jewel Illinois any more but I do have three 21 jewel, Railroad Grade pocket watches. The story behind this collection is both long and complicated but the good news is, I have three great, Railroad Grade pocket watches.
By the mid 1800’s, accurate railroad schedules became necessary. At every train stop along the route they determined their own correct time by observing high noon. 12:00 p.m. in every town was when the sun was at its highest point. Not so much an issue if traveling either north or south but east and west, you had to reset your watch at every stop. In Great Britain they had the same problem. There, they established Prime Meridian through the city of Greenwich and used that High-Noon for their standard. It was 12:00 everywhere in England when the sun was highest over Greenwich. With telegraph, they could send a signal at exactly high-noon for all railroad workers to set their watches by. Then the earth was divided into 24 time zones, one for each hour of the day. At noon Greenwich time it would be one hour earlier in the next time zone west of Greenwich, one hour later per zone as you move east.
In the USA they needed 4 time zones to cover the vast distance from coast to coast. With trains moving in opposite directions on the same track, the risk for train wrecks needed to be addressed. Every train had to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time; thus the need for incredibly accurate watches. Congress set standards for such a watch. It had to be American made, accurate to within 4 seconds per day and made with a mechanical feature that guaranteed against any accidental adjustments. That feature is called a ‘Lever Set’. It requires you remove the bezel (lens) off the front of the watch, release a locking lever that keeps the hands of the watch from being reset. Then you can turn the knob, set the hands to the correct time, reset the lever set, replace the bezel and rewind the watch as needed. Adjusting and resetting the time was a tightly sequenced procedure.
Watchmakers set about to make such a watch and thus we have Railroad Grade pocket watches. They were expensive in their day and the antiques are expensive still, collector’s items. With electronic clocks, not to mention smart phones, wind-up watches went the same way as steam locomotives but the their popularity has never wained. I have a 21 jewel Elgin that is my everyday watch. In 1948 it was a no nonsense, working man’s watch used by porters, mail handlers, yard hands and other such railroad employees. I correct and reset the time about once a month, after it loses 3 or 4 minutes. Then I have a 21 jewel Hamilton from 1939, the year I was born. Its case is classy enough for engineers, conductors and station agents. I haven’t had to correct and reset its action in so long I forget. My 1915 Illinois is also 21 jewels, plain and simple, bought it a year later from the same old Russian at the Anchorage flea market. It was stolen from my home a few years back, treated roughly but ultimately recovered. After repairs it ran great for a year but now loses over a minute per day; don’t know if cleaning and calibration will fix it or if repairs are in store but it still runs smoothly and has a great story either way.
I don’t need three Railroad Grade pocket watches. I don’t need a watch now any more than when I retired my wrist watch. But I’m old; I keep out of trouble and I deserve a few toys. I could have invested in the stock market, then I could admire quarterly reports. But I get great satisfaction, pulling my watch chain with one hand and cradling the watch in the other. It’s heavy and that feels good. One look at the face and I know I am within a few minutes of Greenwich accuracy. I don’t need to be within a millisecond. Modern watches use a battery to make a quartz crystal vibrate then count the vibrations, so many to a second and they are absolutely accurate. So wind-up watches are the timepiece equivalent to Model-T Fords where you must turn a hand crank to start the motor. My ‘39 Hamilton and ’48 Elgin are of my generation, the ’15 Illinois is a generation removed, older than the rest of us. What we have in common is that we keep on ticking.
Keeping track in minutes and hours and another song comes to mind; “Now that my life is so prearranged, I think that it’s time for a cool change;” - The Little River Band. Time is like the proverbial tree, falling in the woods. If no one is there to hear it, there is no sound. Without people to count the seconds there is no time; only the moment. I don’t need a new app for my I-Phone. In my ever-fleeting-moment I can hear my pocket watches tick-tick-tick-tick, I can feel the weight in my hand. I know inside that gold plated, brass body is a delicate arrangement of tiny, precision, fragile springs, needle bearings set in precious stones, brass gears no thicker than tissue paper, smaller than your little finger nail. Someone long before my time imagined how it would work, how to fashion the tiny parts, how to put them together and make it work; no lasers, no robots, no micro-circuit boards, no 3-D printers and that still boggles my mind, makes me feel good.
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