The Gold Watch

There it was, in a yellow jewelry pouch with a Marshall Field label. With all that happened in the last four years, I realized now, that I had again buried my connection to it, deep in the recesses of my memory. But now, I had to deal with it once more.

The pouch contained a gold pocket watch that my paternal grandfather had only owned for a few years. In the years between the two World Wars, he worked for the Canadian National Railroad, which operated in the Midwest United States, from the northern border to the gulf coast.

He worked his way up through the organization to the position of General Passenger Agent, whose major responsibilities were overseeing passenger traffic, ticket rates, timetables, and passenger station services. Upon his retirement in 1939, he was given a gold railroad pocket watch.

At that time, presenting a railroad watch symbolized appreciation for an employee’s dedicated service. The railroad pocket watch was a special type of watch that kept exceptionally accurate time. It was used primarily by those working in the railroad industry. As he enjoyed the early years of his retirement, my grandfather had no idea that soon again, the accuracy of timekeeping would return to be central to his life and likely the cause of his death.

When the United States was drawn into World War II, the railroad industry took on the massive responsibility for the movement of troops and military equipment across the country. The American Association of Railroads recruited my grandfather to help with this task. He quickly agreed, as his son had been called up from the military reserve to serve in an Army Tank Battalion.

My grandfather relocated to Washington, D.C. to take on his duties. The immense pressure of his responsibilities, coupled with the concern for his son, took its toll on him. He passed away in April of 1944, following the years of post-retirement service. 

The gold pocket watch he proudly wore passed to my grandmother, who firmly intended to possess it as a keepsake. Yet, fate had other plans.

I had arrived in this world as a war baby, conceived while my father was on leave from active duty. As with his grandfather before him, I would never know my father, who was killed in action in March of 1945, just 69 days before the fighting ended in Europe.

My father's mother decided that her keepsake should be passed down to her son’s son. She gave the watch to my mother for safe keeping. One afternoon, while reckoning with a diagnosis of terminal cancer, my mother sat down and wrote a note to be kept with the pocket watch, describing its origin and significance, and stating that the watch should become my possession when I "became of age".

My mother passed away three months after my 11th birthday and custody of the pocket watch was then passed on to her father, who raised me thereafter. When my father was called to war in Europe, my mother moved from their home in Illinois to her parent's home in Massachusetts for family support and to be closer to my father's location of deployment.

My mother, sister and I lived with my grandparents. Upon her passing, they raised us through the teen years and on to adulthood. My maternal grandfather, born and raised on a Connecticut farm, composed a short family history, when my sister and I "became of age."

The theme of his writing was highly spiritual and very clear; titled "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother".

The piece he wrote concluded that we were "from the finest New England stock". It was then that he revealed the existence of the pocket watch. He did not show me the note my mother had written for me.

So, the yellow pouch remained just that, a repository for an heirloom. Its contents were never pondered or accessed, until six decades later.

I’d felt that I’d had plenty of opportunity to know more about my father’s story and his side of the family. When I attended graduate school in Chicago, I was within visiting distance of my father's mother, his sister and her family for nine months. Although we had time together as a family, the topic of my father’s life was never mentioned. I accepted our New England stoic culture.

I was 82 years old when I saw the watch again. Four months prior, I had lost my wife of 57 years. I knew that I did not want to stay in our four-bedroom house alone. The time to downsize was now. Through the years of building a life together, and all the things that go along with it, we had accumulated a household of possessions. We talked about decluttering but never got started.

That day, I decided to start with the most challenging place in our home to begin. It was our bedroom suite. As I began to clear out all the meaningful memories, I was surprised to see, right where I forgot I had stored it, in the bottom back corner of my dresser drawer, its resting place for over fifty years.

I opened the pouch and gently pulled out the pocket watch; the face was numbered with each second of each minute. 

But wait a minute!

There was something else in the pouch. I reached in and touched a small, folded piece of paper. I carefully pulled out a note, with very small handwriting by my mother and a thumbnail sketch of my grandfather's life on a tiny sheet of paper, stating her desire for me to have the watch when I “became of age".

As I understand it now, there are three elements of value to a family heirloom: material value, sentimental value and historical value. I had never considered the third element until the moment I finally read the note.

Materially, this watch might sell for around $500 today. Sentimentally, it was in our family for almost 100 years. Historically, this watch remains a symbol of a major event, where a mode of transportation and its management was a crucial element in determining the path of history for our country.

But the note was the most important element. After all, it described the watch as a symbol of a family affected by that same significant point in time. It captured the life stories of a father and his son. It explained the endurance required between the time the watch was put away and wound again, to be brought back to life. It was a letter from my mother, that carried a story I wished I’d known for all this time.