Ode to an Ironman

Guest Post by Matt Kessler-Cleary

My dad isn’t your typical watch collector, or at least not molded in an archetype promulgated in the various horological origin stories I’ve read. He grew up in a blue-collar family in the 50s, and though my grandparents worked hard to make sure their three kids didn’t want for essentials, the family didn’t have the means for excess. Rather than fomenting a desire to, once on his own dime, pursue the material frivolity he grew up without, my dad’s upbringing cultivated a sense of material purpose. In my lifetime, he’s never had a shortage of tools, but each one was acquired for a need and used with respect, but absent delicacy or pretention.

1990s Vintage Timex Ironman

This same mentality carried to his relationship with watches. I’ve written before about how my mother’s passion for wrist-borne finery largely catalyzed my own. Where she lit and stoked the flame of my horological inclinations, my dad’s focus on utility, quality, and purpose has shaped the nature of my collecting.

For most of my life, particularly through my childhood, the watch I most recall my dad wearing has been the Timex Ironman. I can picture the 90s vintage Triathlons on his wrist, and sitting on his bureau, placed habitually among his wallet, keys, Swiss Army knife, and change. (A slight deviation on the latter – my father is eminently sagacious, and in the pay-phone era that endured through my childhood, always insisted that we have enough change – 35¢ in my day – to make a call in case of need.)

The Triathlons, and I use the plural in sequence as he kept one til it was beyond use, were no-frills models. In a time defined by vibrant colors and patterns, he wore the standard black with muted orange accents. Legible, possessed of the alarm function he used as a highly-regimented person, the humble Triathlons took him on 2.5-hour commutes into the Bronx for work, the same duration home if he was lucky, and on to baseball practices, grilling dinner, and later on in my youth, occasional evening boat trips around Raritan Bay (beautiful, but don’t drink the water).

Since my college days, an alarming 12-16 years ago, I’ve unintentionally engaged in a reverse of the typical watch nerd narrative. As I’ve purchased watches over the years, there are some whose time with me comes to an end, and often I’ve gifted them to my dad. As a man of fairly modest means myself, these haven’t been the watches you’ll read about in the blogs or see on display at any vendor of horological repute. From Fossils to Timex Expeditions, to Nixons (the latter always greeted with an appreciation for the watch and a note of disapproval for the president who bore the surname), we’re talking about watches whose value was more in their connotation as gifts than in their quality or value. Seen through a perspective only attainable with the broad brush of hindsight, I was giving my dad the gift of frivolity that he has never felt comfortable taking for himself.

So no, I don’t have a story of how my dad passed down a third-generation Swiss masterpiece (looking at you, Patek). My dad, in the great Irish bard tradition of his lineage, has regaled me

with great stories of the Seiko he picked up overseas after being drafted to serve in Vietnam – pro-tip, a Bellmatic might not be the most subtle auditory experience for recon activity – but there’s no dusty vintage Seiko sitting in the attic. When he left Vietnam, he left behind the material wares needed for that life. What I have instead is much more valuable to me if not capable of being commodified. My dad instilled an ethos in me, a respect for the purpose and quality of a thing, of a tool, and the freedom to use those tools for their designed purpose, with the appropriate level of care affording their capability. He taught me to not only care about my material things but to care for them.

Given the choice between a thing and a memory, between a token given and the experience of stories told by a loved one, there is no timing device capable of measuring the rapidity with which I would choose the latter.