GaryOsberg.com

2018 is coming to a close.  “Father Time” is a theme for many political cartoonists next week.  In 1966, my mother’s mother, Grandma Laura,  gave me three old pocket watches.  One had belonged to her father, Fredrick Anderson.  It is a Waltham watch, silver with a gold stag inlayed on the back.  The note that she gave me read 1890.  Another watch is a key wind.  It appears to be the oldest of the three.  It also is silver with a picture of a dog engraved on the back.  It belonged to her first husband’s father, Meinert Larson.  The note 1890 is also written on the document.  The third watch was a gold watch that had belonged to her second husband, Ingebret Ramlo.  I was very honored that she had entrusted these heirlooms to me. 

I purchased a fourth watch and had the four mounted in an antique frame that hung on the living room wall in our first apartment on Lyndale Avenue in Richfield.  We had a lower level apartment, since that was the cheapest rent.   One Sunday evening we came back from a weekend in Upsala to discover that someone had broken into our apartment and stolen some items, including the watch collection.  I was sick.  The culprits were caught, and all of the goods were recovered except the watches.  On the drive home from work one night I spotted the same boys searching for something in a ditch along Lyndale Avenue. These boys came from good homes and they hired a good lawyer.  I attended the trial and was disgusted to hear them get off with the charge of “lurking and lying in wait”.  I was told after the trial that if I were to make a trip to downtown Minneapolis, to the lawyers office, that I might find a bag on the lawyers desk with “items of interest”.   I played along and I did get the watches back without the antique picture frame. 

While doing my annual house cleaning, I brought out the watches.  I located the key and wound up the watch that belonged to Great Grandpa Meinert and laid it on my dresser top.  As of this morning it is keeping perfect time.  A watch made by the American Watch Company in Waltham, MA,  still going strong after 128 years.

The Live from Here show is a rebroadcast of an earlier show.  Sorry, but no news was available at live from here dot org.

“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”  Lloyd Perry