Waterbury Watches

 

To my dismay, I must have given my new watch to one of my new homeless friends I made while in Savannah. For when I awoke in my lush hotel room, my watch was nowhere to be had. I can see one of them now, basking in the moonlight in his ragged clothing sporting his newly prized shiny watch, sitting outside his tent underneath the bridge, while he watches the big cargo ships come rolling up the Savannah River. I hope he enjoys it.

This reminds me of one of Mark Twain’s writings on his Waterbury watch and the similarity between men and watches. Its a wonderful essay discussing temperaments and circumstances present in people’s lives, but I will save that discussion for a later day. Waterbury watches weren’t fancy watches, from what I’ve read, but rather simple, and inexpensive quality watches.  If anyone could have afforded an expensive watch during those years, I feel sure it would have been Mark Twain (his good years that is). But for some reason they did not appeal to him, he was known for his rather cheap watches along with his cheap cigars.

Mark Twain wrote in his essay, The Turning Point of My Life, “Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man tries to plan things and the watch doesn’t. The watch doesn’t wind itself and doesn’t regulate itself --- these things are done exteriorly. Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the man and regulate him. Left to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things and some men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A Waterbury of that kind, some say.”