By Albert Khasky of Wristeria Watches vintage watch repair
Do you have any old or broken watches? I’m a watchmaker’s son.
Nearly every weekend during my childhood was spent waking up at the crack of dawn and going to garage sales and flea markets with my father. Dad would pile me and sometimes my brother into the car and off we’d go, briskly weaving in and out of the Albuquerque suburban neighborhoods following handmade signs on light posts or strategically placed cardboard boxes. ”This way to treasure!” was all we saw. We had the process down pat too. Dad would say “you get that house on the left and I’ll get the two on this side.”
That was how garage sales were. One neighbor would decide to have one, and one or more other neighbors would join in, and the next thing you knew, there were three or four on the block. There would be people waiting by the curb by 6:00 am – we included. By the late hour of 8:00 am, you knew four things for certain:
- camping and fishing gear, tools, go-karts, and mopeds were long sold;
- good collectibles were a memory;
- newly acquired BB guns and .22’s were starting divorce proceedings if Dad didn’t see why getting them for little Tommy was a dumbass idea to begin with; and,
- Dad would have a new pile of watches rescued from drawers, shelves, and other obscure places.
Oddly, the watches were rarely out for sale. Dad or I would need to ask, and the response was nearly always the same: a faraway look, a pause, a smile, and then “oh yes! hang on, I’m sure I have something.“
All through the morning, I would get a running tally and exited explanation of what we’d found that day: Elgin, Omega, Le Coultre, Waltham, Rolex, Hamilton, etc. We came across nearly every kind of watch imaginable.
Mom hated watches and garage sales, or at best, barely tolerated their existence. Personally, I love them and cherish the memory of those weekends. I started collecting and accumulating watches by the time I was maybe 11 years old. I began doing watch repair by age 12 or 13. Simple stuff at first, pocket watches before wrist, manuals before attempting autowinds. The Valjoux 72 along with Seiko chronographs, and the infamous Pierce, were – and still are – my nemesis on occasion.
“COA:” Dad would say, “clean, oil, and adjust.” Translation: pull the stem and crown, de-case, get the hands and dial off and safely tucked away, carefully remove the balance, set it aside, and get the train and plates into the cleaning machine. Once back together, oil it, and let it settle – running of course – for one day, then a final pass through the Vibograph timer. Then it was re-cased and, if needed, water-resistance testing. Dad would always wander by and check to see what I was doing. I lost count of how many times I did that.
I was also the head crystal changer, battery replacer, gasket installer, cleaning solution replenisher, and the courier to the various jewelry stores in town that used our services. Lest I forget, I was also chief lost part finder. I knew every inch of the floor under the watchmaking bench and some of the very colorful expletives Dad came up with.
Throughout all of it, the watches kept finding their way to us. hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Dad would just keep moving the customer counter forward to make room in the back for more watches. We began to buy more parts too. Watchmaking supply houses, dead watchmakers shops, inventory was everywhere in the late 70s-80s and we bought it all. We always seemed to need more space and every flat surface ultimately succumbed to the constant influx of watches and parts.
In the late 80s, everything changed. The Quartz Crisis, the digital watch age, and the recession all converged to decimate the watch industry. Things were tough – really tough. We made barely made it, yet somehow, even during this dark period, the watches kept flooding in. Orphans of a wounded age. Symbols of a passing culture.
High School ended and I went to college. I packed up my modest personal watch collection and went on with my new life as a computer infrastructure consultant, business owner, husband, and father of my own two boys. The whole watch business drifted into stored long-term memory. It had been an all-consuming few years and I needed to rest.
Then, 25 years later, my Dad, the ultimate encyclopedia of vintage watches, contracted Alzheimer’s. I was devastated.
Although he’d been retired from the shop for years, not a day went by that you wouldn’t still find him tinkering with a broken balance or an ornery tangled hairspring. “Too much hair in it!” he’d say and laugh. It was a 40 plus year running joke. I just smiled. He would also remind me to always change the mainspring, “cheap insurance,” he’d say as if I’d touched a movement let alone a barrel cap in over two decades.
Mom called one day in the spring of 2020, sobbing and flustered. “It’s awful.” she said, “I don’t know what to do!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I just went to Dad’s offices,”(nice warehouse office space really) “and you wouldn’t believe it! It’s a disaster and I don’t know what to do!”
Apparently, Dad had, in the previous few years, consolidated everything watch related into three really disorganized and tightly packed rooms. It was a mess even a dyed-in-the-wool hoarder would look at with astonishment and apprehension.
To say Mom was pissed was not giving the situation the justice and gravity it deserved. All of her anger, frustration, and resentment of the endless time her husband spent on those ticking little annoyances, all the messes and clutter, our failed family economy, all were laser-beam focused on those three warehouse rooms of perceived junk – a harsh reminder of Dad’s all-consuming obsession.
I instantly flashed back to around 1989. It was the summer and Dad was on a trip with his own father. Mom declared that a garage sale was about to happen – in our garage, long an overflow repository for watches, silver flatware, clocks, and all the other things Dad accumulated. She was finally going to clear a place for her car. She sold anything in that garage at practically any price without hesitation. It was half spring cleaning and half retribution.
Dad got home a week later. A lot of yelling ensued. What remained in the house that was capable of producing a “tick” was removed to the shop. Mom got the garage. It was a brutal war in which both sides lost.
But back to 2020. Mom was pissed, upset, and anxious. Those warehouse spaces were daunting. They made the garage look like a cluttered medicine cabinet.
“Get rid of it!” she cried. “I’m paying 800 dollars a month to store this junk, and I’ve been doing it for years. You can’t even walk in there! Why did he do this to me?”
I wanted to say “because he’s an obsessed hoarder who probably spent years with early-onset dementia,” but my self-preservation instincts kicked in and I muzzled it. Instead saying, “I’m coming back to Albuquerque and I’ll help you figure it out.”
I went a couple of weeks later. The pictures she sent didn’t even come close to what it was like in person. When I got to the storage rooms, it was beyond overwhelming. I simply brushed up against Dad’s old watchmaking bench nearly blocking the entrance of one room, and a dozen or more wrist and pocket watches tumbled to the ground. I flinched in remorse at the damage I had likely inflicted on those cases, pivots, and balances – ouch! Mom didn’t even react. She had given these little machines all the emotion she could years ago. There was none left. She got a broom.
“Wait!” I gasped. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning up this mess.”
“Leave it, Mom. I’ll take care of it.“
I took her home, poured her a glass of wine, and sat down for a good hard think.
It was tough to see what remained of the watchmaking shop and Mom’s raw feelings about it. I was also more than a bit taken aback by an overwhelming feeling of excitement mixed with guilt. I missed watches. The sleeping memories were now waking up. The last time I laid eyes on vintage watches, I was a kid. Now I was a grown man – feeling like a kid. Instead of bringing the watches into my adult perspective and the present, the watches dragged me right back to the past. That’s what vintage watches do. They track the passage of time yet anchor us to the comfort and nostalgia of the past. They remind us how fleeting time is while exuding permanence and purpose. The watches in those rooms had been sitting idle for decades now, and most were already decades and some a century old or older when they first arrived. It was like a time capsule of … well … time.
I went back the very next day, alone, and spent hours poking through things. I kicked a crystal-less steel Rolex Datejust head across the floor, almost knocked over a Le Coultre Atmos, and briefly examined 100 or more pocket and wristwatches just laying around.
I brought Mom back the next day but she broke down within minutes. It was just too much for her. I took her home again where another bottle of wine got drained.
In the and, and after an entire summer and fall of driving trailers back and forth to Albuquerque in the middle of Covid, I have finally relocated all the watches and material to my home town. My guess is that I moved over 20,000 pounds of stuff, and very little was in the form of furniture or other large items. It was almost all watches and related parts and tools. Dad’s watchmaking bench too, of course. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Mom can move on with her life, this chapter closed for her, and, I guess I’m in the watch business again.
It’s funny. I now wake up most days and go “garage sale treasure hunting” in my own storage unit. I grab a random box, bring it home, and sort it all on the kitchen table. Sometimes with my son. We find any really nice ones, see if they run, assess their needs, organize them into the ever-growing stacks of lined watch trays and toss the bits of trash that remain. A few days pass and the urge strikes again. I think I’ve got 1500 or so nice watches pulled and organized so far and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I can only imagine what I haven’t even found yet.
I’m not really sure where this will all end, but I’m going to share the journey online, run a small watchmaking business, and see what happens.
