LITTLE ROCK — This old Boy Scout Timex strapped to my wrist has taken far more than one licking, not to mention several trips through Mama's washing machine.
As John Cameron Swayze promised, though, it kept on ticking.
Eventually, of course, abuse and time took a toll. My watch hasn't ticked for at least 20 years.
So on Wednesday I took it to the Timex distribution and repair center in North Little Rock for first aid. Vicki Davis said she would try.
In the days when Timex ruled the world, the company employed many who did what Vicki does.
Now Vicki, who hired on in 1973, is the last one, an analyst who disassembles watches and, more importantly, puts them back together exactly as she found them.
She snapped off the back of my watch, and with various tools like a hand puller and a Swiss oiler, she took apart, cleaned and oiled the 44-year-old parts of my watch.
She showed me the balance wheel, the well flitter, the hairspring, the winder. (My bad. Well flitter isn't a part.
She said "well flitter" when she couldn't pull something loose.) She viewed the innards of my watch through her microscope.
"The mainspring is what you wind," she says. "The crown is the thing you grab to wind. It's a fallacy that you can wind your watch too tight."
She poked at the gears: "I'm trying to clean out some dirt.
Over time, the oil gunks up.
Needs to be cleaned, re-oiled."
The back of the watch case was made in France, she notes, and the case itself, which I won 250 miles south in Pineville, Lousyana, was made right here in Little Rock in August 1965. You can come home again. If you're a Timex watch.
On Wednesday, Vicki reassembled and wound the watch. It was ticking, but would it be ticking tomorrow?
This old watch was a miracle. In the days of my childhood, few kids owned a watch. A watch was considered a high-school graduation present.
In my days as an 8-year-old Cub Scout, however, I won this Boy Scout Timex. I had beat the system. A miracle.
The watch outlasted its original leather band and a couple of vinyl ones. During my halcyon days in junior high, the watch rode my wrist on a 3-inch-wide leather band with shiny silver studs and two buckles.
For the last 20 years or so, the bandless watch has traveled from state to state in a wooden box it shared with early 1900s silver dollars and my high school ring.
Thursday, when I took the watch back to Vicki, it was still ticking. She dug out an olivegreen band with a red stripe down the middle. And the watch is back on my wrist.
It finally ran down at straight-up 8 on Friday morning - an amazing 42 hours without winding. It's a miracle. Well, flitter. Now it's Friday afternoon, and according to my born-again Boy Scout watch, I'm 35 halcyon minutes past deadline, which means I'm in line for a lickin'.
You can watch Vicki Davis work on my watch at www.
arkansasonline.com. Watch old Timex commercials at http://tinyurl.com/74n45n and tinyurl.com/96zz69.
This week at the Timex outlet store, (501) 370-5700, you can buy all styles of nicked and dented Timex watches for cheap. It's like a garage sale but better.
Arkansas, Pages 17 on 03/08/2009