A thought about Chuck Maddox

Hello Everyone

It's been 15 years since my friend Chuck Maddox passed away. I watched Iron Man (2008) last night. It was released in the USA May 2, 2008 . I remember seeing the first trailers like a year before and thinking that it was going to be great.


After the first trailer dropped, Chuck and I started to talk about the movie and how and what it could be. This was a topic of countless conversations with Chuck.

Just for the record Chuck and I talked at least 5 to 8 times a day.. and some conversations were more than an hour long ( also talked Macintosh computers and sometimes Omega watches hahahaha). At that time I was a traveling salesman and I did alot of driving in my territory ( Eastern United States ).

We were both excited as we got closer and closer to the May 2nd 2008 release date for Iron Man. The date came and we were both busy with work... and we kept putting off going to see Iron Man. I called him the morning of May 13th and told him I went last night to see it. I just said it was great and you need to get dressed and go. He replied saying. " he was tired and needed a little while.... " I called him back about 30 mins later and his sister answered and said " Chuck was gone".....


I was in shock... My best friend who I was just teasing, I went to see Iron man, the movie we both waited almost a year to see and talked about everyday like school kids ..... Chuck passed away and never saw the film....


I still miss him everyday, and the 15th anniversary is no different. Chuck passed away on 5/13/2008.

Be safe

Bill

Dear Bill,

Thanks for sharing this very touching account of your relationship with Chuck. If I may say, you and Chuck share the very same traits of generosity and passion. I clearly remember that in my early TZ days (dare I say, more than 20 years ago?), I greatly benefited of both yours and Chuck’s curiosity in search for knowledge in the world of Omega and chronographs.

I remember clearly the first time I reached out to Chuck when I wanted to purchase my first Speedmaster, I figured that he would be swamped by so many others trying to extract any kind of information. I was amazed at how quickly he responded to me and answered every one of my questions and every subsequent email! I dared sharing some observations with him on some of the watches I had purchased. He was humble enough to admit that his knowledge was sometimes anecdotal and that there was so much more work to be done. I found his website and contents to be the most interesting and resourceful at that time and I’m sure he laid the groundwork for others to carry the torch. The information today is astounding ( 😉 @Spacefruit ). Of course, his loss is monumental in our enthusiastic world of watch collecting. He is dearly missed.

I’ll end this by sending kudos to you Bill. Your intense passion over the decades can’t go unnoticed. Your generous sharing of knowledge is simply immeasurable.

Cheers,

Faz,

See my post in the "we need to talk about it thread."

I thought about placing it here. But this is Chuck's thread. The important thing is Chuck lived.

While I did not know Chuck other than what you have said on the chats. I got to tour the spaceX headquarters and Elon hand the Iron man costume on display. I wonder what Chuck would have made of Elon Musk fascination with Iron man and wanting to be an actual Mad Scientist benevolent super villain.

As for the subject of Macintosh. I went to mount some HFS Macintosh floppy disk images. Only to discover that HFS is no longer mountable on the newer versions of OSX not even read only. The mac was a different thing 15 years ago. I wonder if I would have connected with Chuck. Did he also deal with Desktop publishing? Adobe and such things.

It is also interesting to speculate on the nature of time. 15 years before I was born in 1960 WWII was still being fought. Although in the last days. I often see the destruction of Dresden listed as happening around that time. Of course none of that made any sense till I visited Dresden, which I felt a connection to. Another thing that happened was the opening of King Tut's tomb. Now these events are February events. Still as a child I would have nightmares of king tut chasing me down a hallway. (now I envision the coffin bouncing like the one in Dickens Tale of two cities made of India Rubber.)

Not that any of this is relevant (but when am I ever relevant?) It is more about what the separation of time means. When we are 15 something that happened 15 years before seems relevant. Something 30 years not so relevant and something 3000 totally out there.

15 years is also important in calendars. It is called the Indiction, and is where the word indited comes from. A vestige of Roman civil law where all debts are forgiven. Mortgages and prison sentences still retain this time fame from 300AD or so. It takes three numbers to date things in history. The number of times around the sun. The number of lunations (Lunar orbits or lunar days which is about 29 days.) This determines the calendar. As I recall these are called the Golden Number, the Epact and the Indiction. Leap years and month names are used to keep these in alignment with the seasons.

I have no idea if Chuck would have found things like this interesting or not. Back in the late 1990s the Y2K bug was all the rage (It was found and fixed in 1980.) There were a number of watchmakers what came out with calendar watches. Some which had small glass vials of replacement disks, should the watch last another 200 to 400 years.

On the other hand here we are almost a quarter of the way into the 21st century. Yet in some ways the 14th century seems just as relevant as the 20th, the 19th or the 17th. Was Beehoven and 18th or a 19th century composer?

The older I get the more I come to believe in pre-destination. Small things can have large effects. We expect the world today to be the same as the world yesterday and will be tomorrow.

I am sorry I never got to know Chuck. On the other hand I am glad to know such a person existed and touched so many.

So much of what I have learned has come from books and those outside my own time bubble. I am glad I can now add Chuck to this group of acquaintances who never were and will always be.)

Bill as someone I have grown to consider a friend, and knowing how much he meant to you, I can only come to the conclusion that it was my great loss I never got to meet Chuck.

-Phil

Always incredibly generous, articulate, and thorough with his responses. Never snarky, impatient, arrogant. He is still missed for his contributions to the community. Thanks Bill, for reminding us. I dug this email correspondence from January of 2004. It’s important to remember, too, that much of his information was garnered before everything was available and posted on-line. There was a lot of old-fashioned digging and research that made him the quintessential expert of his era. Just an example of how gracious a guy he was:


Hi Chuck, In large part to your generous sharing of information, attached please see my Speedmaster 125 with an original bracelet. As you said, the watch is heavy, but surprisingly comfortable, and I've been wearing it for hours now and often forget it's on my wrist. I'm curious if your center minute totalizer works as mine does: rather than "click" off the minutes, it just glides through them, as a normal minute hand would do. Is this right? Bob.


Hi Bob. Yes, this is correct and is consistent with the Omega 1040, 1041 and 1045 (Lemania 5100 Movements). They basically are linked to the watch's minute hand, not a cam that increment's it like a Valjoux 72 or Lemania 321 or 861. That's normal and as expected. I'm pleased that you liked it, it's in nicer shape than mine is too!

Chuck


Hi Chuck, I know with the Rolex auto movements, if they've wound down, they tell you to manually wind the movement about 15 times to get it going. Would this be about the same with these 1040 based movements?


Hi Bob, you can probably get it going with as few as 15 winds, but a full reserve will require between 40 and 80...

Cheers Bob!

Chuck

I didn’t know Chuck but he sounds like he was a nice guy. The Iron man thing conjure up images of my best buddy John (meathead) he was 17 I was 16 and we were in a band bound for fame. We worked at the same restaurant after school and meathead got uncharacteristically serious and said “Jim I need to tell you something.” At that moment our boss walked in John said “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” John died that night on the way home from work.

For years it really bothered me I didn’t know what he wanted to tell me that was obviously important to him. Decades later it still crosses my mind. Perhaps I will find out someday and who knows, maybe you will be able to see Ironman with your friend. There is so much we don’t know about what’s to come.