Tractors, hexed watches and young love

Hand brake turns on the tractor, the mystery of the hexed watches and young love - more than enough to keep a boy, young man busy just after WWII on the farm.

Example of a (working) wristwatch

One big problem I had – still do – was being so immersed in my work, I lost all sense of time! Even mother’s idea of waving a cloth when I was in view, didn’t work, for I only looked when I remembered. My father thought I was silly buying a wrist watch: ‘Mark my words, if you don’t break it with the hard manual work we do, it will fail from being smothered in sweat, and being out in all weathers.’ Sure enough, Swiss it may have been – the best I could afford was a mere five jewels – but the only correct time it showed was at 6.00 am, when I set it by our American wallclock before we left for work. ‘Get a good Ingersoll pocket watch,’ I was told.

Eventually I saved enough, and proudly put it in a special leather pouch in my pocket. If it didn’t stop altogether, it gained anything up to two hours each working day. I surmised that it was me. Father said that was ridiculous; it happened to be a poor watch, and he would personally take it back and get it changed next market day. The following day I was ploughing ‘Oak Close’, whilst father cultivated ‘Burnt Ground’, and as he took out his watch to see if it was time to get the cows in, the gun that he carried on the tractor, fired! The watch took most of the pellets, a few entered his fingers, and some ricochets ended in his face. Never having possessed a gun licence, he deemed it unwise to visit the doctor, and picked out what pellets he could himself.

Come Saturday he changed my watch and bought himself one, handing me mine that evening, with both watches showing the correct time to the minute. Once in my pocket, mine played up like its predecessor. Despite swapping the watches around over some days, they would both behave perfectly in my father’s care, and be outrageously inaccurate with me. One of the workmen agreed to buy mine, and I decided to save up to buy a quality watch. Meantime I would do some research – and cause some hilarity by carrying around a large alarm clock, and ...

Full podcast reading of this part of Bill Clark's autobiography, 'Route and Branch', former Warden and environmentalist of Wandlebury, Cambridgeshire, UK
https://archive.org/download/ch-2f-tractors-watches-and-young-love/Ch2f-tractors-watches-and-young-love.mp3