A Sunday or two ago, I was halfheartedly watching some professional football, wondering whether the fake cheering of the nonexistent crowd would outlast the coronavirus, becoming, like a sitcom laugh track, a permanent faux-fixture of the enterprise.
Then, something interesting happened.
As the first half of the game was nearing an end, there was that official time waster, the two-minute warning, which CBS used in part to promote the halftime show. The camera panned over the commentators who would soon be telling us about the game. They were sitting at the ready, mostly checking the sheaves of statistics prepared for them by the research department. But not Nate Burleson: The former wide receiver was checking the time. And he did so with style. It wasn’t clear at first — he wasn’t looking at anything strapped to his wrist. Nor was he checking a smartphone. No, he was looking down at something cupped in his palm, something about the size of a macaroon. It was on a chain and glinted under the bright studio lights. Having consulted this metal macaroon, Burleson slipped it into a pocket of his suit.
Burleson was wearing an icon of steampunk fashion: a pocket watch.
There are two sorts of pocket watches: the gentleman’s watch and the more desirable railroad-grade watch. The gentleman’s watch, which only has to keep good time and look good while doing so, operates like a plain mechanical wristwatch. Railroad-grade watches are far more complex, designed to keep the trains running safely on time. If you wanted to reduce head-on train collisions, it helped if everyone working the railroad was operating on the same time. The railroad watches had jewel-rich movements of tremendous accuracy. But they also had safety measures, most notably a lever that had to be pulled to set the time so that one didn’t accidentally change it while trying to wind the watch up.
The other main difference among pocket watches is whether they have “hunter” cases, a locket-like enclosure with a cover that snaps down over the face of the watch.
After World War II, during which GIs got into the habit of wearing wristwatches, pocket watches went the way of the grandfather clock. After the war, pocket watches were disposable. One might recall the scene from Chinatown in which Jake Gittes digs into a pile of unwanted old pocket watches and puts two under the tires of a parked car. The private detective is able to come back the next day and, by seeing when the watches were smashed, know when the car left the night before.
But we are finally seeing a reversal in the pocket watch’s fortunes. Jeff Brook restores and deals in the vintage timepieces at his website www.ThePocketWatchGuy.com. He has the sort of waxed mustache one might expect of a pocket watch aficionado. He says that after decades of neglect, pocket watches have become a popular affectation of snazzy dressers.
When we start going back to work, I suspect there will be a desire to dress more formally. After years of business casual, this year, we reached the reductio ad absurdum of the casual movement: months of working in pajamas and sweats. Putting on a suit and tie will be a way to put 2020 behind us, the more formal, the better. I expect to see a trend toward three-piece suits, a fashion already available at the natty clothier Suitsupply. Nothing finishes off the formality of a three-piece suit quite so elegantly as a watch chain draped to a waist-high pocket.
What sort of watch to put in that pocket?
The Obama White House had Washington’s Tiny Jewel Box restore and engrave vintage, gold-cased Elgin pocket watches as gifts for highly valued members of the administration.
Brook says his favorite collectible watch to wear is the Hamilton model 950B, a pinnacle of the railroad-grade watches.
Whatever the model, I think now is a perfect moment to start using a pocket watch. After all, how better to wait — whether for votes to come in or vaccines to become available — than with that authoritative statement of time and its passing?
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
