Victor Kerlow Dear Diary:
My father was a doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital for nearly 50 years. On several occasions, wives presented him with the wristwatches of their deceased husbands â€" a way of saying “thank you.†My father, being happy with his stainless-steel Omega, passed the watches on to me. One was a gold Longines. The remnants of that are embedded in the asphalt of Queens Boulevard, where they were scattered in a motorcycle accident. The second was a plain-looking Audemars Piguet, which lay forgotten in various dresser drawers for the next 30-plus years.
The Audemars Piguet always seemed big to me. But with big watches in vogue, and now aware of the brand, I thought it would be fun to fix it up. A technician at “the world’s largest watch store†in Manhattan soberly examined the “timepiece,†as he called it, before pronouncing that it would have to be sent to Switzerland for a proper evaluation.
The repair estimate arrived six weeks later.
Crown: $30. That certainly seemed reasonable!
Refinish Dial: $1,040. A bit steep, I thought, but we are, after all, talking about a timepiece here.
Gasket: $6. Who scrimps on gaskets?
Miscellaneous: $195. Probably needs a squirt of WD-40 or something.
Complete Service: $16,027.
As John McEnroe would say, “You cannot be serious!â€
Back to the dresser drawer. Or maybe I’ll give it to Gary, my doctor at Lenox Hill.
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