Sunday Night – 13 April 2008
Hey everybody out there still with me. It is so nice to read your comments on the guestbook. Thank you is pretty lame for what I really mean. Thank you thank you.
Suddenly today I realized I need a watch for the upcoming trip on Tuesday– to Yemen. This won’t be the relaxed maybe-I’ll-get-up-eventually trip like the Hawaii trip. The Malon Fellowship trip to Yemen has a Schedule, with a capital S. So, yesterday I got a new battery for my watch. This four dollar and twenty seven cents purchase is a milestone. I’ve had this watch maybe thirty years, but have not worn it in the last twenty years or so. A watch on the wrist is simply in the way while making cinnamon rolls, or chopping onions, or digging in the dirt, or washing up little kid’s peanut butter smudged faces. I was always taking it off and leaving it on the window sill or on a counter somewhere. It was lost most of the time. The last many years it’s been in Henry’s desk drawer, along with the Omega he got me in Zurich years and years ago. The Omega is so beautiful with its crystal face, and is so tiny and dainty I can no longer read the time, even with my latest prescription glasses.
And, since retirement I’ve rarely needed a watch. Henry and I were always together – HE was never without his watch, and always kept me informed on how late I was running. His watch defined him; he loved precise to the second time. He frequently listened to the BBC, watch in hand, as the seconds ticked off and then a mechanical voice droned on the hour: it is fifteen hundred Greenwich Mean Time. If his watch was off a second or two, he would adjust it. And then, adjust all the clocks in the house.
He loved building Heath kits, radios and clocks. We still have two clocks that he built in the 1960s; they keep perfect time, and they better! because he checked them daily. While on the subject of Heath kits – they are out of business now – Henry built so many of them he gave several away. We considered seriously his building a harpsichord from a Heath kit. It was offered in the catalog for several years. He was afraid that he would get it built, and what if he had made a mistake somewhere and it couldn’t be played? We were a long way from help. I think he underestimated himself. He could have done it.
I cannot remember exactly his watch when we married. It must have been a Bulova, as we all had Bulovas in the 1950s, those Fine Time Pieces. My only memory of Henry and his watch then was New Year’s Day, 1961. We were in our cracker box size house in Hobbs. We were new home owners, there on Northwest Drive. The Master of the House announced he would watch all bowl games, uninterrupted. So, I busied myself in the kitchen (setting a precedent) where our three dollar garage sale cuckoo clock cheerily announced every hour. Henry never moved out of his chair – does that sound familiar? This was a life style begun and perpetuated through the years. At the end of the day, at the final whistle of the final game, he looked at his watch – a perpetual movement watch, all one had to do was wave one’s arm to keep it wound and running. His watch had run down - stopped - while on his motionless wrist! I remember his astonishment.
In Tripoli Henry salivated about buying a gold Rolex. He wanted one so badly, but with his growing up at the end of the Depression mindset he could not bring himself to spend the money. We had money by then, but not Gold Rolex type money. He looked in Benghazi, he looked in Athens, he looked in London, he looked in Zurich. We never went to Geneva where they were manufactured. He could not even imagine himself paying eight hundred dollars for a watch. I think I remember that amount correctly.
In 1967 or 1968 we made a stopover in Zurich specifically to buy a Rolex. He could not go for the gold. He decided a man working in the oilfield needed the Rolex Oyster Perpetual GTM Master Superlative Chronometer Officially Certified. (I just got out the magnifying glass and read all those lines on the face of his watch.) He had done his homework, as always, and researched exactly what he wanted. I’m sure what really sold it was that it was advertised in The New Yorker – and probably in the International Herald Tribune as well. I think that James Bond wore that watch in the early novels, making it more appealing. The salesman did no selling, he simply took it out of the case and handed it to Henry. I thought it was so ugly – stainless steel and not gold; the outside rim part red, the other part blue, with a black face, luminous hour markers, and that strange red GMT hand along with a second hand as well as the hour hands, and the date under a raised magnifying bubble. I was just sick that he would buy such an unattractive thing. No matter – he loved it, beauty (and function) IS in the eye of the beholder – and, he bought me the lovely Omega with its cut crystal rim as a peace offering.
This Rolex was and is Henry personified. It never lost a second. If it dared, we were back in Zurich for a checkup. About five years ago here in Fort Smith he had it checked over – it is so antiquated now they had to send it off somewhere. The comment was it is somewhat of a collectors item, one owner and in such good shape. I’ve worn this watch quite a bit these last few years: everytime Henry went into surgery or any procedure and during his several lengthy hospital stays he would ask me to wear it until he could again, as physical movement kept it wound. He didn’t like it to ever run down.
Now, here it is, on his desk, since the 5th of February, the hands motionless. I’ve come to love this watch. It looks like him. It IS him. It was omnipresent in our marriage from the day he bought it, and has taken on a personality of it’s own. Why didn’t I just keep it on? Because it is like wearing a Big Wheel, it does not fit me, it fits him. It is the modern equivalent of the old timey song – you know, the one about the grandfather clock in the hall that never ran after grandfather died.
As I’ve picked it up just now to look at it again, it has started running.
About the gold Rolex. Henry has one, acquired during our Arabia years. And, I’ve drawn a blank. How did he get it? I wasn’t there! It just appeared and I cannot for the life of me remember the story. Aramco gave Saudi employees a gold Rolex after – was it thirty five years of service? – and/or for retirement? Somebody help me here on these facts. I remember Henry struggling with the propriety of buying a gold Rolex off a Saudi – he felt the employee earned it, it was now his family heirloom and he should pass it down in his own family, not sell it! I remember discussions about so and so retiring, and wondering if he would offer his gold Rolex for sale, and would it be proper to buy it. I wish I could remember now where Henry’s gold Rolex came from – total blank here.
Having a Gold Rolex was the mark of Arrival as a Middle East Oil Man! Except, he could never wear it when we traveled. It was like waving a flag – stopover in Athens, (or any major European city) eat at a nice little café on the boulevard, on the way back to the hotel be mugged for the gold Rolex. We were familiar with several first hand stories of this ilk.
So, the gold Rolex was to have, to hold, to look at, to wear occasionally in town, and lock up in the safe. He really preferred his Rolex Oyster Perpetual. That was his working watch, and he worked seven days a week, on call twenty-four hours a day. He never took it off – well, to shower, but it was the first article of clothing he put back on!
The day of Henry’s initial surgery, February 15th, 2005 – the last thing he said as the anesthesia put him to sleep and they wheeled him away, was: “Be sure Peter gets the gold Rolex.” This line has been a standing joke for years – as the day he became a grade code eighteen and he came home and said I should hope he dies on the job because then he would be worth so much more due to the Aramco insurance – but “make sure Peter (the first born) gets the gold Rolex”. Well! This line did not go over so well with the last born! It was just a joke. Now – we have two Rolex watches – but three children. How to compensate? He should have bought a third Rolex somewhere along the line.
And now, without Henry to keep me on time for the airport, I will leave the Rolexes and Omega at home in the safe we never lock for fear we can’t get it unlocked! and wear on the Yemen trip this old Pulsar watch with it’s four dollar battery and semi-broken Timex expansion band.
It seems odd, even for an old Aramcon, to be in Hawaii one week, and Yemen the next. If you want to see the itinerary, Google Malon Fellowship Study Visit to Yemen. Johnny and Kathy Hains! As the authorities on Yemen, I’ve been going to contact you, we see I haven’t. Any words of advice at this late date? Call me on the cell: 479-420-4501…we don’t actually leave the States until the 18th.
Much love to you all out there….Bonnie and the Cook Family