CM Sackett (@CMSackett)

THE TICK TOCK HEART... My dad's mid to late '60s Seiko automatic... One of the most treasured things I share time and space with. He was a world class Auto restorer and customizer for over 50 years (worked with Ed Roth right after WW II, before he was known as Big Daddy). My dad was a good man. Born in 23, the oldest of five brothers - his dad was a drunk and a rounder. To keep the family from starving to death in South Central Oklahoma in the early 30s, he left school at the age of 9 and got a full-time job... Making a dollar a day. Anyhow, the Japanese did what they did on December 7th, and he and his next oldest brother made the trip to Paul's Valley the next day and waited in line at the Marine recruiter. He got hurt early on, but wasn't about to quit. So he went out to California and got a job at Douglas aircraft as a hydraulic specialist... Single-handedly saved a few hundred lives by redesigning the landing gear system on one of the bombers they were building (they had been having to belly land them a lot of times after coming over the freezing fog of the channel... He solved that problem). After the war, there wasn't a damn thing to make a living at in southern Oklahoma, so he stayed in California for a while... It really was a paradise back then, even in the deserts around Blythe and Needles and Barstow. From all he had been through in his life, and all that he had been through in his first marriage, that good man had an explosive temper. Never seen him touch a woman, and he never did anything except beat my ass when I needed it. But I have seen him take big men apart with bored impunity, right up until his early 60s. To keep from taking any of that what they call PTSD today out on anybody he loved or innocent bystanders, my dad wore spidell twistaflex wristbands. And no matter what Gruen thin line or Bulova or Hamilton he had on, when the new windshield he had been waiting on for 3 weeks showed up broken inside the box, or the window cranks snapped just as he was finishing up an 800 man-hour job... Well, you get the idea - that watch came off and went sailing into the nearest wall. That's why I don't have a collection of about 40 fabulous classic tick tocks from my dad. But for some reason, this little beauty, that a lady friend gave him in his mid to late 40s, made it off his wrist a few times... But he never turned loose. Until he gave it to me, right before he died. Is it a $4,000 Omega seamaster? No. Is it a one-of-a-kind, still new in the box with all paperwork Rolex? Nossir. I have one of those, and had a chance at the other. What it is, for me, is a soul-close connection to a man who loved me with all he had, to the best of his ability... Whose own little self winding heart is still beating flawlessly. May you folks get as much joy out of the time partners on your wrist. NOTE: I just rediscovered the last image (for reasons that makes sense to me, and don't matter to anyone else... All my photographs from that era of my life have been packed away for years). This was taken just a few months before he went Home. You can see the wristband (being a man who worked and earned his living with his hands, he always wore his watches turned in towards his wrist, to keep the Crystal from getting scratched). And even though he had stopped stopping time with walls, his damn wrists were so huge that he still wore one and a third of those twistaflex wristbands. Only by that time, it was out of habit and for comfort.