This watch I got here was first purchased by my great-grandfather during the first World War. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee. Made by the first company to ever make wrist watches. Up till then people just carried pocket watches. It was bought by private Doughboy Ernie Coolidge on the day he set sail for Paris. It was my great-grandfather’s war watch and he wore it every day he was in that war. When he had done his duty, he went home to my great-grandmother, took the watch off, put it an old coffee can, and in that can it stayed until My granddad, Dane Coolidge, was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight the Germans once again. This time they called it World War II. My great-grandfather gave this watch to my granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane’s luck wasn’t as good as his old man’s. Dane was a Marine and he was killed, along with the other Marines at the battle of Wake Island. My granddad was facing death, he knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leaving that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, my granddad asked a gunner on an Air Force transport name of Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he’d never seen in the flesh, his gold watch. Three days later, my granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to my grandmother, delivering to my dad, his dad’s gold watch.
This watch. This watch was on my daddy’s wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured, put in a Vietnamese prison camp. He knew if the mooks ever saw the watch it’d be confiscated, taken away. The way my dad looked at it, that watch was my birthright. He’d be damned if any slips were gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family.
