As I said earlier, nobody knows where it came from except grandpa but he is not talking.
I am told that in 1965 grandma was doing laundery and the watch was washed which then came apart. Grandma yelled at grandpa for leaving it in his pocket and grandpa yelled at grandma for not checking the pockets. It was a bad enough arguement that my mother and aunt remember that fight vividly to this day. This was a very heated subject so I assume grandpa just wanted the cause of the fight to go away so he boxed up all the pieces and put it away. Grandpa passed in 1991, so then we cleaned out the cars, guns, and all the other stuff of his that grandma did not want around anymore.
1995 - we were helping grandma move to a smaller house when she found the box hidden in a closet. Since I work on cars, grandma said take this box of junk, maybe you can fix it. Whatever, I dont work in a jewlery store but who argues with grandma so I put the box in my car.
1996 - I scatter the pieces across a table and it sure seems like everything is there for reconstruction so I pack everything up and head down to a watch shop. The guy seems to be knowledgeable and sold me a repair. New minnute hand, hour hand, crystal, clean off the face, clean and oil watch mechanism, all for $100. At the time I was working a part time job and going to college so I thought $100 for a gold watch was a deal so I left it there. Within 3 months the back kept falling off, the crystal was loose and the minnute hand fell off so in frustration everything went back in the box.
2001 I am working out of town in Salt Lake City ( I was from Kansas at the time) when I walked into a very nice watch shop that had many Omega watches. I almost bought one that day because I kept thinking how much I liked the way my broken one looked. Luckily the person I was talking to knew a lot about old Omegas and talked me into bringing down to have it looked at. So I call up my mother to dig through the stuff I left at her house when I moved out. (dont laugh, everybody does it) She found the box with the Omega, mailed it out me, and I gave it to the repair man. I dont remember what he charged me, must have been $150-$200 or so but when I got it back everything was tight, and has worked flawlessly to this day. I do however wish I would have had better hands put on it then.
Christmas 2001 I am going to my aunts house for Christmas and within 10 minnutes my aunts face goes white, she looks at my mother and asks her "is that the watch?" mom just said "yes it is" but did not talk about it anymore in front of grandma. Eventually everyone wanted to get a closer look at it though.
It is a very good looking piece, I am proud to have it and my wife already knows that it better not go through the wash.
