Beech Tree News Network

When I was in eighth grade, I got my first watch.  It had a small face and one of those twisty metal bands with links that stretched to fit over your hand and onto your wrist.  I felt so grown up going to school wearing my new watch.  It was a Timex waterproof watch.  It said so on the dial and on the back of the watch case, which is how John Cameron Swayze said you could tell it was authentic, on the numerous Timex watch commercials on TV at the time—it was also dust-proof and dirt-proof, he said.
    Timex watches touted the slogan, “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” and they went to great lengths to prove so.  John Cameron Swayze, the company’s spokesman for over twenty years, did live demonstrations during the many ads that ran on TV during my growing-up years.  One of my favorites was when he strapped “this beautiful Timex ladies waterproof watch” to the inside of a Kitchenaid dishwasher, fitted with a transparent door, in order for us to see what was about to take place: namely, “forty-five gallons of water churning every minute,” whipping the watch around until the dishwasher was stopped.   The “beautiful Timex ladies waterproof watch” was removed, shaken off then held up to a microphone in order for us to hear it still ticking.  A few of the other “live demonstrations” I remember involved a watch strapped to a boat propeller and onto the tip of an arrow—subsequently, shot through a glass window pane—and one placed under an elephant’s foot.  That last one didn’t survive the test, hence the new slogan: “Time for a new Timex.”
    People don’t wear watches much anymore, probably due to the invention of the cell phone.  I miss the subtle rhythms that accompanied the wearing of a watch.  The outstretched arm that pulled the cuff of the shirt back from the wrist, the wrist then rotated slightly inward, the downward glance at the small face on the band.  If you ask somebody what time it is today, there’s a frantic digging through pockets or purses or papers on a desk in order to locate a cell phone with a digital display of exact hour and minute and sometimes even second.
    Time has lost its personableness—I’m not sure that’s a real word, but it should be.  It is no longer a friend with a little face we wear on our bodies, it has become an electronic task master.  Of course, I realize a lot of that is the society and the world in which we now live, but when time lived on my wrist, it was about things to look forward to.  Things like, when it was time for Laugh-In or the Andy William’s Show or when school was out or supper was on the table.  Now that time lives in my purse, it is simply when to be there, do that, hurry up or pick up.
    There are still people who wear watches.  This week, I met a teacher who said hers was a necessity because she couldn’t always get to her phone.  Mostly, though, watches have become prestige symbols for the affluent.  You see ads for the really expensive ones in men’s magazines and on TV during Tennis matches or golf tournaments or during the holidays.  Audemars Piguet, Montegrappa, and Rolex cost enough for a good down payment on a house and the guys who wear those probably still reach for a cell phone when asked what time it is.
    You can still buy Timex watches; however, they are a far cry from the “beautiful Timex ladies waterproof watch” that sold for fifteen dollars in the sixties and the men’s Marlin watch that sold for $9.95 during the same time frame.  They are more like thirty to fifty dollars now.  Sometimes, I wander over to the jewelry case at Walmart and think about buying one, but I realize it’s probably just my longing for a time when I seemed to have more time.  Still, it would be comforting to look down at my wrist occasionally and see a friendly face looking back.