I couldn’t remember the name of the watch repairman.<\/p>\n
All my brain could say was "Walter Odemer".\u00c2\u00a0 Who was Walter Odemer?\u00c2\u00a0 Then I remembered, back in ’74, when I moved to L.A., Walter Odemer controlled Blaupunkts.\u00c2\u00a0 So if you went to the BMW dealer and you had a problem with your radio, you didn’t deal with Hoffman Motors, the automobile’s then distributor, but Walter Odemer.\u00c2\u00a0 Walter Odemer couldn’t still exist, could it?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not the man himself…\u00c2\u00a0 All those Germans who controlled the world of BMW and Mercedes certainly had to be dead by now…<\/p>\n
Hell, even most car stereo places have gone out of business, now that cars come with much better radios.<\/p>\n
What was the name of the guy who repaired my watch, that Rolex sent me to?<\/p>\n
That was back in ’77, just after I’d gotten the watch, when I was still in law school.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that’s thirty years ago!<\/p>\n
I drove by his last location on Bundy.\u00c2\u00a0 Walter GOODEN!\u00c2\u00a0 I guess I was on the right track.<\/p>\n
I came home and I Googled him.\u00c2\u00a0 They had his whole story.\u00c2\u00a0 How Rolex had put him in business.\u00c2\u00a0 Back in ’76.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out he was born in Panama in 1930 and started fixing watches when he was thirteen.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that’s a lot of experience!\u00c2\u00a0 Now he must be…seventy seven?<\/p>\n
I’d just seen him.\u00c2\u00a0 When my watch stated to lose time.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d stopped by his emporium.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t look that old.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, he’d shaved all the white hair evident on my previous visit.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, his insides were aged.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this an advantage or disadvantage?\u00c2\u00a0 Was he so worldly that he’d be schooled in the nuances of my thirty year old watch or…did I need someone younger?<\/p>\n
I went to the dentist today.\u00c2\u00a0 And the woman who cleaned my teeth was a newly-minted dentist herself.\u00c2\u00a0 She used this special water tool, that emitted a high-pitched whine.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out it removes discoloration.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t ever remember having that treatment before.<\/p>\n
And then the dentist himself showed up.\u00c2\u00a0 He told me one of the guys who died in the avalanche in Wrightwood was his patient.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d been watching TV and had been shocked to see his picture.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked Dr. Wood how old his patient was.\u00c2\u00a0 And I was informed that the deceased was his contemporary.\u00c2\u00a0 But exactly how old was Dr. Wood?\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly older than me, no matter how buff he appeared.\u00c2\u00a0 And if he’s older than me, with a daughter who’s a dentist herself, he must be over…sixty?<\/p>\n
I read in a ski magazine earlier today that times had changed, that it wasn’t like back in 1985.\u00c2\u00a0 1985 is relatively recent in my book.\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly before shaped skis, but long after the Rossignol surge of the late sixties, when Stratos took over the slopes.<\/p>\n
And then on the back page, Warren Miller was instructing us not to try and compete, to impress our aged buddies, that he believed we had only so many bumps in our knees.<\/p>\n
My knee!\u00c2\u00a0 I’d escaped the slopes unscathed, but after our flight out of Eagle was canceled Monday night I’d slipped on the ice…\u00c2\u00a0 I stayed on the ground for a good thirty seconds, I was convinced I’d fucked something up.\u00c2\u00a0 I think I dodged a bullet, but I’ve got some soreness.\u00c2\u00a0 How long is that gonna last?\u00c2\u00a0 I would have brushed it off if I was still a teenager, even a twentysomething.\u00c2\u00a0 But at my age, you don’t heal that fast.<\/p>\n
At my age?\u00c2\u00a0 How old am I?<\/p>\n
When my father was my age, he had two kids in graduate school and another in a private college.\u00c2\u00a0 He was an adult.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t feel like an adult.\u00c2\u00a0 Is the glass half empty?\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, is the sand in the hourglass running out?<\/p>\n
Those kids in the van on the way to Denver…smoking as soon as we pulled up at the airport…\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t they know that kills?\u00c2\u00a0 And what about mercury in fish and red meat…\u00c2\u00a0 Do I live large and not worry about losing a couple of years of my life…\u00c2\u00a0 Or do I fight, struggle for every minute?<\/p>\n
Soon, I’ll be gone.\u00c2\u00a0 Just a memory in the minds of the people who knew me.\u00c2\u00a0 The world will still be here, but inhabited by all new people, who’ll have no idea I ever existed.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll think we always had the Internet and hybrid cars.\u00c2\u00a0 They won’t be dazzled by e-mail, certainly not by mobile telephones.<\/p>\n
So do I stay with Walter Gooden or trade him in for a younger man?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a big investment, approximately $350 to fix a Rolex.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not interested in throwing anyone a bone.\u00c2\u00a0 I want success.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want the thing to go haywire like when I was swinging my arms at that Guns N’ Roses concert.<\/p>\n
Guns N’ Roses?\u00c2\u00a0 What was that, 1991?\u00c2\u00a0 When Eddie Rosenblatt still ran Geffen Records?\u00c2\u00a0 Has it been over twenty years since "Appetite For Destruction"?<\/p>\n
Yup, Axl’s had plastic surgery and Slash has written a book and there’s been no new music.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if there was, would anybody care?\u00c2\u00a0 Who would play it?\u00c2\u00a0 Are they just an oldies act now?<\/p>\n
Stick around long enough and cool goes out the window, we end up alike, we’re all in this together.\u00c2\u00a0 And then we’re gone.<\/p>\n
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I couldn’t remember the name of the watch repairman. All my brain could say was "Walter Odemer".\u00c2\u00a0 Who was Walter Odemer?\u00c2\u00a0 Then I remembered, back in ’74, when I moved to L.A., Walter Odemer controlled Blaupunkts.\u00c2\u00a0 So if you went to the BMW dealer and you had a problem with your radio, you didn’t deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-hD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}