The Things I'd Carry

rob's The Things We'd Carry post posits "I'm not one to spend a lot of money on cars or fancy watches or other ostentatious trappings of success."  If you read my posts you know I like cars and watches so color me ostentatious.  And I posit that fancy watches can hold memories just like the stuff in rob's post.  For example, go to 6:15 in this interview with Alton Brown.  Or this clip from Pulp Fiction.

This is my 1965 Omega Seamaster Chronograph, reference 143.646.  It's a special watch, if you're into watches, because it has a 321 movement, the same movement in the Omega Speedmasters worn by the Apollo 11 astronauts, which is also known as the Moonwatch.  The only movement certified for use on the moon!  It's sort of like an air-cooled flat-six, if that means anything to you.

Aesthetically, I love the domed crystal, small (by modern standards) size, and the way the 3-6-9 markers are cut away by the chronograph registers.  I like to imagine some apprentice who was too junior to be allowed to touch a dial, let alone a movement, cropping them with giant shears so that they fit perfectly with the subdials.  There's a whole online fetish around cropped numerals, if you're into that.

It's also a special watch because my father received it as a high school graduation present from our Mitsu Bacsi (or our Uncle Nick for you Muricans).  Mitsu Bacsi wasn't really our uncle, he was my grandfather's best friend but we called him Bacsi anyway because Hungarians like to appropriate people into their family, it's a cultural thing.  Mitsu's wife was Swiss and during a trip back to her motherland they got watches for all the zfamily.  I think this was a much cheaper proposition in the 1960s than it is today.  The Seamaster originally came on a beads of rice bracelet but it pulled the (copious) hair on my father's wrist so he threw it out (they now sell for hundreds of dollars) and wore it daily for about 20 years until he did some business with Seiko and wound up with one of their watches.  He pulled the Seamaster out of a drawer another 20 years later, had it serviced in Switzerland, and gave it to me for my 31st birthday.  I wore it daily for about 10 years until I realized that it's a relatively valuable (maybe $5k-$6k) and elderly timepiece, and got some newer watches to wear daily.  It's now a special occasion type of thing, or I wear it if I feel like I need a little extra oomph to get something done--I have Dad and Mitsu Bacsi with me while I negotiate with some jerk or interview for a job.

Dedicated GTB readers will recall the story of Mike's watch.  Mike mentioned giving the watch to zson, but eventually all those involved agreed that it made more sense for Shirley to have the cash than for my half-man-half-monkey son to have a $150,000 watch.  So I bought this Tudor Black Bay 36 that I will give zson at some point.

Tudor is a Rolex affiliate, sort of the Chevrolet to Rolex's Cadillac, so it follows the spirit of Mike's intent.  The size, handset, and dial color are all great, the ETA movement is reliable and easy to service, and it's an automatic so you don't have to wind it, just wear it.  I wear it regularly so it will have a few dings when I hand it over.

To commemorate leaving a miserable job, I bought myself a Sinn 756 Diapal.  It's a chronograph that also tracks time in two time zones.  It isn't a proper GMT, the second hour hand is based on 12 hours, but if you work with people in another country (which I've done) and wanted to time things like the number of hours you've been on the record in a deposition (which I've done) and you want a durable travel watch that can do both things, this is your huckleberry.

Sinn is a German company with a reputation for rugged tool watches but they don't have much name recognition in the US.  The 756 features a modified Valjoux 7750 movement so it has some Swiss engineering, but its design and materials are very Germanic--the German navy makes submarines using the same steel that Sinn uses for their watches.  It's not super wide, 40 mm, but it's stupidly thick at 14 mm.  It wears well but it doesn't like to stay under your cuff so it's prominent.  I'm giving this one to zdaughter someday because a girl named Esme should have an oversized watch from her father.

You may think that mechanical watches are frivolous and wasteful, and I see where you're coming from.  But I promise you that your kids and grandkids aren't going to cherish your Apple Watch or Casio G-Shock.  Hopefully mine will rely on these when they need a little extra oomph as I have with the Seamaster.  I'm taking them with me.

rob had a lot of photos in his bag of holding.  I'm not into them.  It rarely occurs to me to photograph something other than food and zcats.  That said, almost all of the art in zhome is photographs taken by my other Hungarian fugazi uncle, Bela Bacsi.  His brother married my grandfather's sister, which makes us absolutely nothing.

But he was a righteous dude and a nominally famous photographer.  This interview involves a photo he took in Chicago for Life Magazine.  Go ahead and read it, I'll wait.  I have that same photo in my dining room and it's important to me for several reasons.  

First, it's a damn good photo.  Many people have commented on it, it's striking in person and gives off a strong communal vibe.  The details are great.  At most two of the chairs are the same.  Everyone holds their knife Euro-style.  It's hard to see below, but the three boys at the bottom of the image are sharing two chairs.  The baby is mischievous.  

Second, Bela Bacsi provided me with tons of support, encouragement, and wisdom when I was getting divorced and I will always be grateful to and fond of him.  He was married a few times himself, being an accomplished stickman in his youth and a sly dog in his dotage, and he always took it upon himself to wingman me with the waitress whenever we went to lunch.  "He's a lawyer, very successful!  You should give him your phone number!"

Third, I did a piece of legal work for Bela around this photo.  zwoman and I went to dinner at a higher-end chain restaurant in NYC.  They recently renamed a few of their flagship locations, and along with the check they included a postcard announcing the renaming.  The front of the postcard was this photo (I'm telling you it's a damn good photo) so I called Bela the next day and congratulated him on getting this bit of work.  It turns out they didn't license the image, they just used it, and Bela Bacsi was ripshit to put it mildly.  We worked out a deal with the restaurant (they were stunned that an 88-year-old Hungarian guy had spies on the ground and I shamed them mercilessly) and I refused to take any money for the work, despite Bela Bacsi's protestations.  But I do have a copy of that photo.  It goes in the bag.  You can find his photos and books online if you want something for your wall or shelf (or your bag).

That's really all I need to keep.  I have a few other important items (things zkids made for me, a photocopy of my grandmother's handwritten manuscript about her life from 1929-1945, my grandparents' license plates from the 1940s and 1950s) but they aren't as interesting to write about (except for the manuscript, which I cannot summarize) so I'll travel light with three watches and a picture.  I probably don't even need a bottomless bag.

A Story

When I was young, there was a fellow who wandered around the neighborhood. His name was Ricky, as the kids on my block told me. He was like 19 or so. Something was a bit amiss with Ricky. He always wore an army jacket, and he always had a VERY serious look on his face. He didn’t loiter. He kept walking around. Thank goodness.

When I think of him, I kind remember him like the bodyguard in My Bodyguard, not the Whitney Houston film The Bodyguard but the 1980 film with Matt Dillon and Martin Mull and Adam Baldwin as the bodyguard. I think mostly I remember him like that because the character in the film is also named Ricky and wore an army jacket, but that’s not where the similarities ended. Anyway, Ricky was more than a little off.

When he spoke, which I prayed with all of my might that he would not do when we crossed paths (usually along the four-block walk to and from my school bus stop), it was usually unintelligible. Way out there.

Stories about Ricky were wild, because... well, kids will believe just about anything. Honest to God, the story we heard most often was that Ricky lost his cool and picked up a car and threw it into the swamp that was adjacent to my route to said bus stop. Even then we said “No way,” but when we heard it was a small car, we thought “Maybe.” As we got older, we thought perhaps he’d driven a car into the swamp. Any way we sliced it, we were told to be afraid. And we were afraid.

I never asked my parents about Ricky, mainly because the less I thought about Ricky, the happier a childhood I would have. I felt bad for him. I mean the guy clearly had no family. I guess, well, none of my friends ever talked about them. Or where he lived. I suppose my parents could have proactively explained Ricky, assuming they knew the details, but maybe they didn’t want to give my clucking henhouse of a circle of friends any chicken feed. Or maybe the less they thought about Ricky, the more they could sleep as parents. There but for the grace of God and all that jazz.

In retrospect it makes me sad. (I’m making an assumption about Ricky now, based on what I saw and remember from 40 years ago, but I feel pretty sure.) I worked for a nonprofit serving people with disabilities for 8 years, and when I think of the monstrous stories about a monstrous character that we created and propagated, that makes me feel lousy. Obviously fear does that to people. You’re afraid of what’s different, and he was just different. Well, plus it’s legitimately scary to a kid when a cross between an old kid and a young adult is ambling around your block saying words that don’t compute... and you have a strong sense that it’s not one of those times when an older person says stuff you don't understand because they are older and smarter and wiser.

The neighborhood where I grew up, like that of many people I know, was a site of blissfully ignorant youth in an era when you said bye to Mom as you were pedaling away on a summer morning and returned to base only for sustenance or because the sun went down. Ricky represented an element that did not go with that grain. At my current age, I realize that this must have been hardest — by a Larchmont mile — for poor Ricky. At age 8, we felt a little sorry for him but were mostly scared. And we managed that fear with group therapy (groups of friends telling predominantly fabricated stories) and establishing a common enemy to help us cope. I’m glad that, for the most part, I no longer need to do this in my life.

Anyway, in the last years before I forgot about Ricky, either because he no longer came around or because in 7th grade we moved to a new neighborhood, Ricky took to carrying a bag with him. I guess you’d call it a satchel, though that word isn’t very Ricky. As you’d guess, that accoutrement to his ensemble, as the descriptors venture further and further away from apropos, was fuel for a whole new batch of red-hot fables from the Lords of Buckingham Avenue, or whatever we were calling ourselves that week. Front. Page. News.

Why did he always have the bag? What’s that about? Where did he get it? And of course, most importantly, what in the world was in it? Top answers on the board included “a gun,” “knives,” “nunchucks” (one of my friends thought nunchucks were the baddest-assed thing ever and mentioned them as often as he could), and, of course, “a human head.” One kid thought Ricky might have a jar with his own excrement in it. That kid always said stuff like that to elicit a group “ewwwww, sick!”

We never knew what Ricky had in his satchel. Maybe comic books. Maybe a list of grievances. Could’ve been a human head or a poop jar. Could’ve been anything. Could’ve been nothing. But I’ll tell you this: whatever the hell it was, you could prop it up on a TV-tray next to a podium and run it as Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential candidate and that ticket should beat Donald Trump. 100 times out of 100, Sleepy Joe and Ricky’s Bag should sweep Trump/Pence out of the Oval Office in an electoral bludgeoning that makes Fritz Mondale feel emboldened. That’s what should happen.

Given that it’s the Democratic Party, National chapter, in the United States of America orchestrating this, however, well... that clouds the issue. As my JV football line coach used to say, they could fuck up a wet dream.

That’s what I think.