My Bad Idea
Have you ever had an idea that sounded really workable at first glance, but when you go to implement it you realize that it isn’t. It is really a bad idea. I think that I may be in that territory now. I have railed against the term “my journey” as it relates to the “hobby” of hoarding watches. I won’t link to it, but I have already said my piece.
My initial approach to this was to find some pretentious autobiography and use facts from that to create this post. For all of the pretentious autobiographies published only Donna Karan and former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam picked that title. I can’t make a middle class Long Island designer or former Indian president funny. I just can’t.
So, maybe just the straightforward approach is better. My first watch was a mechanical hand-me-down Timex from my father. I figure that it was a mid-60’s watch that I wore in 1974. I then had a pin pallet skin diver. Just about everything after that was a gift, always quartz. I had a Swatch just a year after they were released. I hated it. It was plastic. By the late 1980’s I wore a series of Gucci watches that I received from my girlfriend, now wife. They were classy, or so I thought. I got married in one like this:
I saw a thin gold mid-century Hamilton in an antique store in the mid-1990’s and had an epiphany about watch styles. Since that time my main love has always been mid-century, post-war to mid-1960’s. I had a phase of trying to collect every kind and brand of American watch. I had a Soviet phase. @Porthole influenced me into military style watches. I have dipped a toe into the pre-WWII watch world. I come back always to the two decades after the Second World War.
It is not much of a journey. It ends where it began: in a world of black and white TV’s, Technicolor movies, and big cars with V8 engines.
The conceit of this bad idea is that I now pass it on. So to @Dingus it goes. The time is 10:32 a.m. EDT or 7:32 a.m. PDT so 36 hours is 9:32 p.m. PDT. You are on the clock (or watch).
Restitutor Orbis. Aristocrat of beauty. Autocrat of time. (Trying to perfect trolling over at theescapementroom.com)
Thanks for sharing your journey. Love it
And so it is.....engage!
Can we see the thin gold mid-century Hamilton? I started browsing your WRUW shots but I don't anticipate living long enough to find it in there...
He was known as “The Missile Man of India,” one of whose device tests was described by its director as “a fizzle.” I’ll bet you can come up with something!
Actually, I thank you. I knew nothing about him, but his Wikipedia entry reveals him to be a fascinating and incredibly accomplished figure.
That gucci is pretty cool tho
Can we see the thin gold mid-century Hamilton? I started browsing your WRUW shots but I don't anticipate living long enough to find it in there...
In August of 2005 I evacuated New Orleans before an oncoming hurricane as I had done numerous times before. I took my cheap quartz Fossil because it had a blue back light. Thanks to the geniuses at the Army Corps of Engineers the city filled with water. My Hamilton and a few other watches did not make it. I did not even see it when I came back to clean out the house a few months later.
(The cat was found, which is good story if you like cats, and lived to the ripe old age of 22.)
(Are hardwood floors supposed to look like that?)
A few months ago I bought this, not gold but in the same style:
Not to get all deep or anything, but attachment to things does not bring happiness. I wish that I was as free of possessions as I was in late 2005.
The one thing I learned about "the good old days" is that the only thing that made them good was the hindsight of knowing what came later and comparing the two. Vintage watches were good in their day but are poor by comparison to todays watches though we still love them for the nostalgia.
In August of 2005 I evacuated New Orleans before an oncoming hurricane as I had done numerous times before. I took my cheap quartz Fossil because it had a blue back light. Thanks to the geniuses at the Army Corps of Engineers the city filled with water. My Hamilton and a few other watches did not make it. I did not even see it when I came back to clean out the house a few months later.
(The cat was found, which is good story if you like cats, and lived to the ripe old age of 22.)
(Are hardwood floors supposed to look like that?)
A few months ago I bought this, not gold but in the same style:
Not to get all deep or anything, but attachment to things does not bring happiness. I wish that I was as free of possessions as I was in late 2005.
I volunteered in Biloxi in December of that year. Wanted to go down because NOLA is a very special place to me, but it my connections led me to Mississippi. Incredible that you found that cat. Glad to hear it.
An amazing journey. Much like Siddartha Gautama, all of us are on a true spiritual journey of self-discovery... via the holy act of collecting watches.
In August of 2005 I evacuated New Orleans before an oncoming hurricane as I had done numerous times before. I took my cheap quartz Fossil because it had a blue back light. Thanks to the geniuses at the Army Corps of Engineers the city filled with water. My Hamilton and a few other watches did not make it. I did not even see it when I came back to clean out the house a few months later.
(The cat was found, which is good story if you like cats, and lived to the ripe old age of 22.)
(Are hardwood floors supposed to look like that?)
A few months ago I bought this, not gold but in the same style:
Not to get all deep or anything, but attachment to things does not bring happiness. I wish that I was as free of possessions as I was in late 2005.
Thank you for that reply! Good news about the cat, bad news about the Hamilton, but your replacement looks every bit as handsome as anticipated 😍.
Great journey @Aurelian !
An amazing journey. Much like Siddartha Gautama, all of us are on a true spiritual journey of self-discovery... via the holy act of collecting watches.
Great observation! But yet I find this epic tale to be more spritually fulfilling than that Buddah stuff 🧘♂️
In August of 2005 I evacuated New Orleans before an oncoming hurricane as I had done numerous times before. I took my cheap quartz Fossil because it had a blue back light. Thanks to the geniuses at the Army Corps of Engineers the city filled with water. My Hamilton and a few other watches did not make it. I did not even see it when I came back to clean out the house a few months later.
(The cat was found, which is good story if you like cats, and lived to the ripe old age of 22.)
(Are hardwood floors supposed to look like that?)
A few months ago I bought this, not gold but in the same style:
Not to get all deep or anything, but attachment to things does not bring happiness. I wish that I was as free of possessions as I was in late 2005.
Like you I lost all my possessions except the clothes I had on my back in 2018 in an isolated flooding incident.
Unlike you, I was very lucky to have the one watch on my arm that meant anything to me. The watch my parents bought me over 20 years ago.
Wonderful tale, @Aurelian
I'm sure someone at Grandseiko will be analysing that photo of waterlogged turquoise floor boards to produce next season's must have dial?
I’m just glad to see someone other than me make a Bad Idea Jeans reference . . .
The rumours of my influence have been exaggerated