Forums Latest Members

Sunday reading - my very long and personal tale of an Omega Speedmaster Cal 321

  1. Peturbed Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    50
    Likes
    96
    Seeing as I posted a picture of this watch on another thread, I thought I'd tell you my personal story of how I ended up with a decent Speedmaster when I had thought it was old and tatty. If you are expecting a dramatic tale, well, don't read any further because it will probably bore you.

    I was born in 1957 and as an only child, and I had good, but strict parents, but that often meant long and lonely hours in my room where my imagination was my survival kit. During that time, at the age of 11, and during the Apollo 8 mission, I remember being captivated by hearing Frank Borman reading out the beginning of Genesis while back on earth, humans witnessed the very first earthrise with that now iconic image of our beautiful blue jewel of a planet above the barren landscape of the moon, now one of the most iconic images of all time. I remember even back then feeling very emotional as he read those words out from so far away in a voice filled with emotion, distortion and static - "In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

    From then on I became obsessed by all things space. I built a big scale model of the Saturn 5 rocket in my room, almost taller than me, carefully painted each part, and it was my pride and joy. I wrote to NASA - they sent me a patch and some images. So obsessed was I that I would sit with a pen and big lined notebooks and literally write almost every line of communications between Mission Control and the space capsule in the missions that followed. I had countless pages of notes of these backwards and forwards conversations as I would record them on my cassette recorder and go back and forward with the rewind/play buttons, transcribing every word, even if they made no sense to me - but I would afterwards try and find out what the phrases, couched in very technical terms, actually meant.

    Man landing on the moon was a big event for me. I clung to every word because even back then as a 12-year-old, I somehow knew that I was witnessing a great moment in history. Those almost ghostly images in crude black and white back then were so different to seeing every drama of modern history in full high definition colour as we do today. But today, as they did back then, Armstrong's words must surely resonate with almost every human being that hears them, and those words and what they meant are perhaps the very basis of our love affair with the Omega Speedmaster.

    I remember rushing down to the neighbourhood store to ask the owner for the newspaper billboard before he glued it up on the window, and him kindly giving it to me. I still have it, now yellowed and old, and I've photographed it below for you to see.

    I would look longingly at those Omega Speedmaster advertisements in Life magazine, and dream of one day being an astronaut, but especially I dreamt of that watch, with its deep black dial and crisp white hands. It made me think of the instruments in a cockpit, black dials, white hands. I used to nag my father to buy me one, endlessly, and he said to me that he would if I really behaved well and got great grades and distinctions at school by the time I reached 16.

    I never let the watch go nor the dream of having one. From then through the tragic Apollo 13 mission to the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17 in 1972. By then, I was then 15 years old, and for the last three years I'd been a model son and a very diligent pupil at school; I earned distinctions in most subjects except Math. I went to my dad and asked if I could now get the watch he promised. At that time the watch was well under $100, and even then, while it was a fair amount of money, I felt I had really given my everything and that I'd earned it.

    So when my father gave me a shiny box with a watch in it later that year, I couldn't contain my excitement. But that excitement quickly became an acute disappointment when I opened the box, not to find an Omega Speedmaster, but a vaguely ugly look-alike called an "Ollech and Wajs" (O&W) sports chronograph. (I found an image of the exact same watch on Pinterest which I have 'borrowed' to post here). I should have been grateful and not felt selfishly entitled but I must admit I wasn't at all grateful. And it was made even worse when I discovered shortly thereafter that the watch could be bought for $10 via mail order through an advert on the back pages of a magazine - and that he had obtained it that way. Some people today find them collectable but quite frankly they are awful. When I opened it I found what I later learned was a Roskopf movement, the cheapest and ugliest budget movement you could think of, with one single jewel. So bad was it, that the pushers could only start and stop the second hand. It had no zeroing functionality at all. If you wanted to time something you had to let the second hand go around and then try to press the stop pusher at exactly zero which was, of course, near impossible. Even more useless than that, was that when you started to time an event, the time part of the watch stopped completely; you had to go and reset the time from another watch or nearby clock! It obviously was just a simple hack function that somehow became a timer!

    I only opened it once to see if there was something wrong with it that stopped it from returning to zero, but all I found was something that looked so ugly and poorly made compared to the beauty of the Speedmaster movement.

    At school, I lied to my friends, especially Brian, a young man with rich parents who'd just bought him a shiny new Nivada which zereo'd properly and looked like a real watch. "That's no Omega Moonwatch," he said and mocked me. "Oh yes, it is," I said. "It's just a new model" "So where does it say Omega on the dial?" he sneered. I pointed to the initials OW on the dial which stood for Ollech and Wajs. "That stands for Omega Watch," I said, hopefully. But I fooled no-one, especially myself, and not long after, the watch stopped working and I left it in a drawer, never to be used again.

    I was so disappointed in my Dad. I'd worked so hard and I felt he had really let me down, and lied to me. If they couldn't afford it, he could have just said, "Son, I know you worked really hard, but we just can't afford that right now. Maybe one day." I would have understood and let it go, but he never told me why he gave me a $10 mail-order watch, and I always felt that maybe I just wasn't good enough.

    In my late twenties - the mid-eighties, whilst my obsession with space had gone the way of childhood things, I still loved watches, and even though I knew very little about them, I started collecting one or two. In those days, very few people collected watches; they were easy to find, and most people didn't want someone else's old watch, especially if it bore all the previous owner's life scars. I had befriended an old watchmaker and I would visit him from time to time to watch him at work.

    One day, I saw the head of an oldish Speedmaster in his drawer and I asked him if I could look at it. It revived long and deep memories for me, and so I asked him if I could buy it from him. "Well", he said, "the captain of a Greek tanker owned the watch and dropped it off for a service whilst in port (I live in a harbour city in South Africa) but had never come to collect it and it had been sitting there for two years."
    "Wait another year", he said "and if he hasn't come back I will sell it to you for the cost of the service."

    I had forgotten about it, but one day when I was visiting, he asked me if I still was interested in the watch. I immediately said yes, but that I would like it to be nicely polished, with a new dial, hands and bezel fitted. It turned out to be very fortunate that I was somewhat poor back then, and that I could not afford to have all those new parts ordered from Omega and fitted. It doesn't seem like much more than small change now, but a service and the cost of the watch from the watchmaker would be $200, with no new parts fitted whatsoever. Being poor saved me from ruining what I would later discover to be a highly collectable watch. So I settled on a basic cleaning and service with all the old authentic parts refitted, and I had my first Speedmaster - still completely original.

    In those days, as I have said, old watches were considered to be a bit tatty, and while I was really happy to finally own a Speedmaster, it always felt a bit second best. I would still look in the window of jewellery stores and wish I had the new shiny thing, especially now that it had "First man on the Moon" written on the case back. And even when I had gotten somewhere with my life, and I could easily afford one, I never bought one, because I felt my father had betrayed me.

    Of course, this can be viewed as ungrateful and self-indulgent and self-pitying, which I guess it is. But we are all human and we all carry baggage around from our past, which we mostly act out unconsciously not knowing why or where it comes from and we often persist with the things and memories that pained us in childhood instead of making a real conscious effort to let them go and move on.

    Years later, I would learn that I had a pre-moon Cal 321 Speedmaster that was very desirable and collectable and not just a tatty old unclaimed watch. I would be grateful that I couldn't afford to have the parts changed.

    And one day, now with a family of my own, I told my wife the story. She understood it because she is a kind and caring person, and she turned to me and said "Yes, I understand your Dad never gave you that watch or kept his promise. But your Dad gave you many other things, a university education, a good upbringing, and when he died, he left you each and every last cent that he had worked for. With that money, you could go out and buy twenty or thirty brand new Speedmasters or more. So, in the end, he did actually buy you the watch. Many times over."

    It was at that moment that I finally understood, and I learned to be grateful for all the good things in my life, and to really enjoy the watch that I bought, with all its age and scars from a previous life and forget about the scars that I was busy and unnecessarily creating in my own life.

    And that is my Speedmaster story.
     
    speedmaster.jpg RDMposter.jpg ow.jpg
    Edited Jan 29, 2018
  2. gemini4 Hoarder Of Speed et alia Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    5,855
    Likes
    16,579
    Thanks for sharing your story
     
  3. Dero13 4 watches. All set to the wrong time. Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    1,601
    Likes
    6,451
    Nice story. Good thing you didn't have all the parts replaced! DO you still have the Ollech and Wajs?
     
    Caliber561 and Peturbed like this.
  4. southtexas Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    893
    Likes
    1,199
    Great story, thank you for sharing. Especially poignant to me as a father to two young boys.
     
  5. Peturbed Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    50
    Likes
    96
    No, it died all of 45 odd years ago. I don't think it was very repairable and it got left behind somewhere. It kinda looked like this and wasn't terribly pretty.

    (image courtesy of http://www.ranfft.de/)
     
    ranft.jpg
  6. merchandiser Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    594
    Likes
    2,111
    Great story about a great watch, well done!
     
    Peturbed and nonuffinkbloke like this.
  7. T<25 Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    319
    Likes
    1,395
    Nice story. I wonder what's the point of having the reset pusher on the Ollech and Wajs.
     
    nonuffinkbloke likes this.
  8. justinz Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    136
    Likes
    122
    Thanks for sharing. I was just getting my little one to bed and he was trying hard to press the pushers and start the chrono on my Speedy. Like you, if he gets good grades and wants the watch it’s all his.
     
    Peturbed and nonuffinkbloke like this.
  9. Starman71 Jan 28, 2018

    Posts
    352
    Likes
    1,364
    Thanks for sharing your story.
     
    Peturbed and nonuffinkbloke like this.
  10. Peturbed Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    50
    Likes
    96
    The bottom button only starts the second, the top stops it. The rest does nothing else. The use of the "chrono" completely stops the actual time part of the watch!

    Out of interest, here's a description of one that was on sale at eBay -
    Brand: Ollech&Wajs
    Model: Sport
    Country of Manufacture: Switzerland
    Gender: Men's
    Age: Vintage 1950-1970
    Movement: Manual winding, R. Lapanouse S.A. 1 Jewel
    Features: Chronograph
    Condition: Running condition. Timing functions work properly. The model does not have a function that turns the second hand to zero.
     
    Edited Jan 29, 2018
    nonuffinkbloke likes this.
  11. lillatroll Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    2,691
    Likes
    4,171
    An enjoyable read on a grey Monday morning. Glad you got your watch in the end.
     
    Peturbed and nonuffinkbloke like this.
  12. JACK G Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    359
    Likes
    646
    A nice read.

    I bought myself a similar styled watch in the late 1960s - mail order too. Pic below 'borrowed' from the Internet.

    [​IMG]

    I believe this has the same movement as yours.

    I didn't wear it for long and gave it to my Father in Law who wore it a couple of times and then it stopped!!!!

    I still have it and due to lack of use is in excellent condition with just a little rubbing on the back for a nylon Nato.
     
  13. Peturbed Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    50
    Likes
    96
    Yes indeed, judging by the image, I'd agree 100 percent with you that it does. As you said, they were not very reliable, and looking inside, it's not hard to understand why. With only one jewel, I'd think that with constant use, the gear pins would have worn the holes out rather quickly.
     
  14. Bumper Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    615
    Likes
    1,122
    Thanks for sharing, we often don't understand the reasons behind our parent's decisions, especially when we're kids. It's only when we become parents ourselves that we can appreciate some of the sacrifices they had to make, or the difficulties they (might have) faced..
     
    Peturbed likes this.
  15. ConElPueblo Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    9,587
    Likes
    26,961
    What a captivating read - thank you for sharing.
     
    Peturbed likes this.
  16. Dash1 Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    1,823
    Likes
    3,497
    Great story and a beautiful Speedmaster.
     
    Peturbed likes this.
  17. COYI Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    496
    Likes
    723
    Great story. I'm glad you finally got the watch of your dreams.
     
    Peturbed likes this.
  18. Nla91 Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    206
    Likes
    737
    Thank you for sharing this story.
     
    Peturbed likes this.
  19. BBunter Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    21
    Likes
    34
    That's a great story! Thank you for taking the time to write it up.
     
    Peturbed likes this.
  20. nixf6 Jan 29, 2018

    Posts
    358
    Likes
    1,025
    Every watch has a story and every man has his own story.
     
    marco and Peturbed like this.