The Hunt For: A Grandfather’s Omega
A rumor of a decades-lost Omega and the journey to find it.
"I think it said Omega or something on it," said my mother, recalling the "old watch" once owned by my grandfather on my dad's side. Apparently, in the early 90s, she had found it in my dad's drawer and had it serviced for their anniversary. But my dad, a carpenter by trade and consequently averse to wearing any kind of jewelry or metals due to many stories of married men losing their ring fingers via wayward power tools, lovingly placed it back in its box and forgot about it for a decade. No one remembered what it looked like, where it was, and with several different moves between houses in that time frame, it was assumed lost forever.
That sentence was music to my ears. I had just taken my first steps into the hobby (and naturally tripped and immediately fell very deep) and had of course heard of Omega. I was away for university at the time, so when the Christmas holiday arrived and I went back for a few weeks, I had to go hunting for it.
First came the interviews. Luckily, my 95-year-old grandmother was living with us. “What do you remember of it? Was it steel, gold? Round, rectangular? Strap, bracelet? What color was the dial?” No one remembered much, but it was probably a round watch with a leather strap, likely given to my great-grandfather in the late 40s who then passed it on to my grandfather. And they knew it said “Omega”. This luckily (hopefully, I prayed) ruled out a bad old fake, and added too many years for it to be a stashed early Speedmaster. Still, that was enough to go on.
No one was particularly convinced it was in the house. My family had moved from suburban Toronto to a very, very small town which increased our acreage enough to include a garage. Though we had been there since 2001, as is the case for many I’m sure, there was still a stack of unpacked and forgotten boxes upstairs. Since no one had seen the watch in recent years, that was the first place to look. I mobilized the troops (several siblings, armed with a description and the burning desire to find treasure) and we ventured into the dark garage attic.
We quickly found at least three dead mice. Lots of trinket boxes (all empty), sheet music, car parts and abhorrent 90s house decor. No watch.
My great grandfather was a man of some mystery, though it was known that he served with the Canadians in the Second World War. My grandmother is sharper than I am, but talks very little about her past and is reluctant to regale us with stories. My grandfather, her husband, was not a good man, and the stories that came with him were not happy memories. It was bittersweet searching for an artifact from a legacy meant to be forgotten.
None of the usual hiding spots turned up anything. We opened every little box, every sewing kit, every toolbox and drawer. The only place left was the basement. It had seen some flooding over the years and thus some clear-outs of junk left in it, but we held on to a tiny shred of hope.
Searching for something that belonged to a family member is an experience that brings up stories and secrets you may not ordinarily uncover. Memories are fuzzy and so much is so easily lost to time. I don’t know about you, but I collect watches in part because they connect me to history, and in this case, a watch could rewrite one.
And there it was. Deep in a corner under the stairwell, after digging through piles of sleeping bags, camping equipment, boxes of knick knacks and files. A small, ornately carved oak box. Inside was a treasure trove of history: my grandfather’s uniform buttons, an oxidized silver tie pin and cufflinks, illegible crumbling notes, even a silver tooth. And wrapped in an old cloth army sewing kit, an Omega watch.
35mm in steel, a triple calendar with month, day, date and moonphase. Dated to 1947. It’s a mystery how my great-grandfather came into possession of this watch, as it wasn’t available to the Canadian market. But there it was.
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