Tales from a Rolex Submariner

I’ve always liked nice watches.

Most of them, however, have been cheap rubber Casios or whatever the hell I could find because I worked in law enforcement for years. I broke at least four watches during various fights in my career. In my younger, salad days of course.

Today, being an elder gentleman and more irascible, in my seventh decade, I won’t fight you. I’ll just shoot you. Which is why I can finally wear my Rolex Submariner.

It’s a beautiful watch and it has an incredible back story. It goes like this.

My father passed away in 2009 at the age of 88. He was a member of The Greatest Generation, flew B-17s for the Mighty Eighth, and seldom spoke of his service. I cornered him for a couple of days a few years before he died and got him to talk a bit about his family. Those conversations are on cassette. Yes. Cassette. Tape.

About two years before he died, as we were gathering documents and I was assembling his wishes, archiving them for my oldest brother, the executor of Dad’s estate, he quite mysteriously told me that I’d one day find a chest.

He didn’t tell me where it was. But he said I’d find a number of things there. One of them would be a watch he’d acquired when he was in Hong Kong but, he said, it was likely a knock-off because it hadn’t been all that expensive at the time in the 1960s.

He said it looked like a Rolex, so he’d bought it. He said he wanted me to have it when I found it.

The strange thing was, about two months prior, he said he wanted to get a very specific watch that he’d found at the WalMart on Watt Avenue. I took him there and purchased it for him. He was really quite pleased. To have Dad happy was, well, magical. The watch would illuminate when a button was pushed. Remember that.

My father passed away at 3:30 AM on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009. It was now my oldest brother’s job to tend to the estate.

The strange thing is, with a few exceptions, neither of my brothers were interested in very many of Dad’s things. My oldest brother’s wife insisted on taking a trunk from the living room and the family heirloom book, plus a knick-knack I wanted from Grandma’s house. But I stood back and let whoever wanted to take what they took when they wished. I was the youngest brother. I felt I just had to take one for the team.

There were tons of photo books. Uninterested. I took them. There were tons of Dad’s books. Uninterested. I took them. There were tons of family slides and photographs. Uninterested. I took them. Then I found something.

I found the chest. It was in Dad’s shop, up high, in the rafters. It was heavy. I managed to heft it down and opened it. Inside I found maps of California from World War II marked CLASSIFIED, which I kept. Dad was a USAAC pilot and they were likely maps he’d used in PriFly. I’m not giving those maps to anyone. They are mine.

I found his USAF dress hat as a Colonel, with the beautifully-embroidered clouds and lightning on the brim. I also found one of his piss cutters still in its original plastic bag (one of the most stupid caps in the history of history) with a price tag affixed. $2.75.

I found his custom desk sign when he was a Captain.

And I also found a green box — not so impressive — which contained an absolutely gorgeous watch in blue, silver and gold, called a Rolex Submariner. You know. The fake watch he bought in Hong Kong.

A few months after the funeral, I wondered. Was it fake or was it real? I took the watch to a couple of local jewelers, both of whom said they could neither confirm nor deny its validity. They both said I needed to take it to a person on Fulton Avenue who could examine the watch.

To simply open up the back of the watch — much less confirm any kind of provenance — was a $200 charge.

The appraisal was another $250.

But wait.

That Rolex Submariner was appraised at $15,000+.

Gulp. It was real.

And Dad gave it to me. No one else. It’s a beautiful watch. Hell, it’s gorgeous.

But, according to Dad, it didn’t light up at night. And if you didn’t wear it, it would die. It just didn’t interest him. He sort of liked the colors but that was it.

He’s right. It doesn’t light up at night. Unless you hold it under a lamp and cause the face to illuminate for a while. It dies if you don’t wear it and keep it running by the movement of your wrist.

It will tell you the numerical date, but you have to adjust it for Leap Years.

It’s hella analog in a digital world.

But it was my Dad’s, it’s real, and I’ll treasure it always.

BZ

 

My father: 10 years on

Col. Richard Lee Alley, USAF, 4-13-1920 to 2-11-2009

My father, United States Air Force full bird Colonel Richard Lee Alley, passed away ten years ago, on this day. February 11th, 2009.

He was 88 years old. He missed his 89th birthday by less than two months.

This year, he would be 99 on April 13th.

I cannot, still, tell you how terribly I miss him.

He was a part of The Greatest Generation.

The generation that secured promise and freedom and liberty for not only the United States, but for the entire world at large.

At the end of his life, he proffered large decisions. I had to make many of those large decisions. One of the worst for me was deciding to take him out of his very own house. The house where me and my two other brothers were raised. The house where he clinged.

First, I had to physically take him out of his house. Where he and my family had lived — for over sixty years. He said: “goodbye house.”

I wrote about looking at my father’s face in repose.

Ten years. I can remember it like yesterday. It seems like it was yesterday. And there isn’t a day that I don’t think about Dad.

So many questions. So many questions I would loved to have asked him. But I was wrapped up in my life and didn’t realize until a year or so later how he may have played a very serious role in any number of USAF adventures on many levels.

That first night of his passing, the 11th, I had a dream. I awakened with it in my head. Carole King was singing “So Far Away.” I remember that most distinctly.

Dad passed away at 3:30 am on Wednesday, February 11th. The night before, I had been able to summon both my brothers and my wife to his bedside. Friends visited. I thought he would make it through that night. I was sure of it. My wife counseled me: “kiss him, kiss him goodnight.” But I didn’t do it. I tried to make light of his condition, that he’d be around the next day. I’ll horribly regret not kissing my father goodbye to my very own dying day, come what may.

I pondered what had happened, here. I reflected, once again, here. I thanked you, my readers, for supporting me here. My father’s funeral was documented here. There were more goodbyes for me, just selling my father’s car.

He was a member of The Greatest Generation. Those who made so many major sacrifices for our great nation, kept us safe in our beds, and kept the country strong and free. Their incredible sacrifices. Though they didn’t necessarily want to do so. He fought in B-17s. He trained in B-25s. It was almost the perfect triumvirate: his brother Jim signed up for the Army; his youngest brother Bill enlisted in the Navy (and had the USS Yorktownsink underneath him). My father went for the Army Air Force.

If you want to digest the quintessential document of sacrifice, read “With The Old Breed” by Eugene B. Sledge. Astounding. Simply astounding. Or perhaps the superior(but lesser read) Bert Stiles book: “Serenade To The Big Bird.”

They didn’t want to be there, they feared, they wanted to run away. And yet they persevered.

God bless you, Dad.

I think about you every day.

I can only hope, as I wrote:

I’ll bet my Dad’s flying high above the earth right now, in an open cockpit Consolidated Vultee BT-13, canopy slided back, where the skies are blue, the weather fair, and he’s young, strong and free. So free.

God bless you, Dad. Hold Mom’s hand. Step into your past, may it be untroubled and calm and fair. May your love be unfettered and limitless and beautiful. Whatever your ideal reality would be, let it be.

And I write this post through a film of tears. My throat constricts. I still miss you terribly.

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just let this go?

BZ

 

Sack Heads: AGAINST TYRANNY, Wednesday, 7-11-18, with Sack Heads SHAUN

The Sack Heads Radio Show on the SHR Media Network is no more; in its stead — same time and day — is the Sack Heads: AGAINST TYRANNY Show (an actual SHAT Show) helmed by Sack Heads Clint and Sack Heads BZ.

Tonight it was SHR co-owner Shaun (Clint was unavailable) and BZ who tore through the gristle of today’s screaming headlines and ripped out the sinewy Tendons of Truth ensconced within, all from the Hoary Streets of Shatramento, Fornicalia, exposing the trembling toadies, sniveling jackanapes and fripperous fopdoodles infesting Leftist and Progressive ant farms nationally.

Despite a bit of last-minute scrambling behind the scenes — there were mic and headphone issues — the show ran swimmingly and the studio temperature was lovely.

The first hour we talked about Mayhem, Kaos, Control, Get Smart, Don Adams’ Sunbeam Tiger (and the difference between it and the Alpine). The Tiger was built by the now-defunct Rootes Group in the UK and was powered by a Ford-sourced 289 CID V8. Just over 7000 Tigers were built between 1964 and 1967.

We also spoke of barn finds, Rolex watches, the technology of WWII, landing craft, BZ’s family history, the TV series COMBAT with Vic Morrow, Rick Jason, Cage’s BAR, the Greatest Generation, about fathers, about sons, about WWII, and about Rashi Sharma. He wanted to interview every WWII veteran he could.

490 WWII veterans die every day. There aren’t many left whom God hasn’t taken.

Check this out:

Shaun and BZ spoke quite emotionally about the relationships between fathers and sons, as well as regrets aplenty. I’ll just leave it at that. It became very emotional for us both.

“My father was a great story-teller.”

We spoke about old wounds and new wounds.

The second hour focused back on politics and specifically on SCOTUS, the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the ludicrous proffering of HRC in 2020. Enjoy.

For DISH subscribers: your Hopper has recently been wired to play YouTube videos. You can now toss the SHAT Show onto your massive flatscreen TV and watch him in all of his obese, biased and politically-execrable potty-mouthed goodness. Quarter in a hat.

If you care to listen to the show in Spreaker, click on the yellow button at the upper left.

Listen to “Sack Heads: AGAINST TYRANNY, Wednesday, 7-11-18” on Spreaker.

If you care to watch the show on the SHR Media YouTube channel, click on the red arrow in the middle of the video. Please SUBSCRIBE to the SHR Media channel.

If you care to watch this episode on the SHR Media Facebook page (in glorious color, like any of the Quinn Martin productions), click right here. Kindly LIKE us and FRIEND us on Facebook.

Please FOLLOW the SHAT Show on Twitter @2againsttyranny.

BZ asks to remind everyone that the hosts only monitor the Shat Room here at SHRMEDIA.COM — though there are Shat rooms on Facebook and YouTube. We can only monitor one Shat room at a time so, please, we ask that you partake of the SHR Media Shat room. Heavy sigh: if only BZ had a producer who could monitor them all.

-Want to listen to the SHAT Show archives in podcast? Go here.
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-Want to watch past SHAT Shows on YouTube? Go here.

“SHAT is where it’s at.”

Thank you one and all for listening to, watching and supporting the SHR Media Network: “Conservative Media Done Right”!

BZ