A man ought to have a good pocket watch. My grandfather told me that once while his wooden leg squeaked against the old pine boards of the porch swing, the other leg still good enough to push, slow and steady, like the rhythm of a lullaby you’d forgotten you knew.
He said it with the seriousness of someone telling you where to dig for gold, but with a chaw of Red Man tucked into the corner of his mouth so that you knew he didn’t give a damn if you listened or not. I was too young then to know what the hell he meant, but I remember the words. And now I can’t forget them.
He meant the watch, yes, but he meant other things too. He always meant other things. Old mountain men have a way of saying one thing and meaning five. It’s the economy of hard lives. You don’t waste words when you’ve spent your life digging in the dark for coal and come back up with less than a fair wage and one good leg.
That watch of his, it wasn’t gold, but it was gold to him. It ticked with the kind of weight that comes from knowing you’d earned it. He’d bought it after a particularly long stretch in the mines, down where time doesn’t move right, and men forget the sky. It was heavy and silver and it had a crack down the middle like a scar, but he polished it every Sunday and checked it every morning, as if God himself might call on him to account for how he spent his minutes.
It wasn’t about knowing the time, not really. It was about being the kind of man who had a reason to know it. Men like him didn’t wear watches because they were fashionable. They wore them because time was something they couldn’t afford to lose. When you’re poor, time is the one thing that makes you rich if you can hold onto it long enough. The watch meant he mattered. That someone, somewhere, might be waiting on him.
When I was a boy, I thought the treasure was the watch. When I got older, I realized the treasure was the man.
The world’s slicker now. Men wear wristwatches that beep and flash and tell them when to breathe. Most don’t even need those. They’ve got phones smarter than philosophers and dumber than hound dogs. Nobody carries a pocket watch anymore. Too heavy. Too old-fashioned. Too much of a reminder that life is ticking away one gear-toothed second at a time. But I carry one. Not his. That one went into the ground with him, right where it belonged. But I bought my own. Not fancy. Just enough to feel like something.
Because there are days when I feel like less. Like I’ve done less. Built less. Endured less. Maybe I don’t bleed coal dust or eat beans out of a can five nights a week. Maybe I’ve never propped up a splintered leg and looked out over a holler that felt like the edge of the world. But there are days when I need to remember what he meant.
We are all looking for something small and solid to tell us that we matter. A man ought to have a good pocket watch, not because of the time, but because of the weight. Because of what it tells you when you reach into your coat and feel the metal warm from your body and ticking still. It tells you that you are here. You are counted. And dammit, you are somebody.
So I say this to the youngster watching their grandfather on the porch swing, the one who didn’t yet know what his words meant. Keep the memory. Keep the swing creaking in your mind. Keep the Red Man if you must, though the doctors wouldn’t like it. But most of all, keep the idea of the watch. Keep something that says you’ve lived, and you’re still living. Because time may be cruel, but it’s also honest. And a man ought to have at least one thing in this life that tells the truth.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.