My gold pocket watch is an anachronism. It is as cutting edge as an electronic typewriter or as snail mail. A cell phone tells better time, sleek and graceful, with gigabytes of ring tones and video. The heavy watch in its place of honour represents a time before retro with the telling of analog stories as the graceful hands sweep the ivory face. The surface imperfections that give it character – just like an old man’s nose – also give it evidence of the occasional misadventure.

A gold watch was once a faintly ironic token of gratitude presented to a retiring middle manager or an exemplary long serving employee. It was a mute recognition of loyalty and devotion to the corporate cause at a time when severance packages, multiple careers, and retirement bonuses were unknown. Service and hard work, the twin Protestant ethics, was the time honored way in a younger Canada where the reward was a watch and a handshake.

My gold watch was a tribute, but of the athletic kind. It is the only earthly keepsake that I possess from my grandfather, Hart Crawford, who died over 30 years ago. The golden gleam of its thick frame is as rich as it was in 1925, when it was presented to Hart at the celebration of the triumph of the Fraser’s Café Senior Men’s baseball team, an itinerant band of West Coast laborers, lumbermen, and ne’er do wells.

Hart had moved to the Queen Charlotte Islands at age 18, a protest against the rule of his imperious mother, where he worked as a lumberman. Hart was a tremendous athlete, a champion sprinter, high jumper, and third baseman. In the summers, he would make his way by boat from the Charlottes to the Lower Mainland and Vancouver. Hart Crawford, lumberman, transformed into Hart Crawford, ball player.

A Time Portal into the Past

Fraser’s Café was an eatery in New Westminster and was somewhat grandly European in its name, if not the cuisine. The owner loved sports and the men’s ball team was his vehicle to promote both his passion and his establishment. The Fraser’s played in a Vancouver league, but their fun and income supplements came from barnstorming tours of Spokane, Portland and other stateside cities through the 1920s.

My grandfather died when I was 15. My best memories of Hart are those at the old cottage in Muskoka where he would have a glass in his hand and his guests in his thrall. Those summer afternoons were a time portal into his past. Hart told of his adventures selling bug killer by train in the Depression, drinking beer with his pal Flash Hollett – the old Leafs defenseman – and the weekly lunches with the “Moaner,” Toronto’s sainted sports writer, Ted Reeve, in the 1950s. He would launch, with only modest prompting, into stories of how his brother Ed made and lost a million dollars three times, as Ed invented efficient log skinning and cutting equipment without ever obtaining a protective patent.

“You can dine with kings (and sell them lumber!) if you can make them laugh”

Hart was a highly successful lumber salesman in his latter working life and he was proof that selling and storytelling are branches of the same science. More than once my grandfather, who was not bookish to my memory, would quote Stephen Leacock saying: “Did you ever read what old man Leacock wrote about sales? I met him a few times in Orillia, you know, when we had the mill. He said that ‘Sales is the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.’ Is he wrong? How do you think we built this place?”, as he pointed to his grand Lake Muskoka retreat. Everyone would laugh and more tales were told. It was the complete captivation of Hart’s audience with his voice and his words that is my most enduring memory. He was an old man who had lived a life that was one story after another, as if by design.

“You can dine with kings (and sell them lumber!) if you can make them laugh,” as Hart moved into his next lesson. The stories flowed from Hart like warm syrup and his joy was not connected to the sound of his own voice, but in the nods and the recognition of his listeners. He was able to make a connection between them and these far off places and people. Hart did not draw a picture so much as he enveloped his audience with grand images of colours and personalities. He created a world with the dead resurrected and distant places brought close, using only his words and humour.

In 1925, Fraser’s men rolled through any and all competition on the diamonds and the team received their watches and their honors in November, 1925. Hart told us that the victory celebrations lasted two days and said that “A success must be celebrated – there may never be another!” It was the one and only national title ever captured by Fraser’s Café.

Hart returned to Ontario in 1928. He met my grandmother Evangeline the next year and when they married in 1930, his gold watch found its place on his waistcoat. He wore the watch at my parents wedding, and at other family ceremonials through the years. It was on his vest as we sat with him in the funeral home, where he lay in his coffin awaiting his next world and the stories to be told there.

Talismans, keepsakes, mementos – we all need a reminder of the connection between past achievements and present endeavors. It is on the difficult days that embrace us, that we need these tangible bits of our own history or the history of someone who made their past seem alive to us. A chunk of gold, proudly engraved to celebrate a long dead ball club becomes a life preserver. The warmth of my grandfather’s voice keeps me buoyant when the world seems determined to snatch me in its undercurrents. My memories of Hart Crawford are not contained in an 80 year old watch – they spring from it, unbidden, with the same beauty and the immediacy I felt as I listened to him, an enraptured boy at the cottage. His stories are as bright as the summer sunshine and as human as laughter itself.