This seemed to me the right postcard to show on a morning (or possibly afternoon) after the holiday we set up in honor of clock-watching. When some of us have spent our evening waiting for the two hands to meet at midnight so we would be positioned to kiss the right person (or a well-constructed wrong one), it seemed only right to pay tribute to places not so constricted by tradition. The fact that in some regions any time the clock shows is right for a quick canoodle seems worthy of commemoration.
Of course, this is really one of those cards where the first part of the sentence is separated from the second so that the second could be reprinted to fit any town or region where a storekeeper wanted to stock this cheerful thought. I have done a little online research into the town of Newark Valley, and can find no evidence that it is any more famous for its canoodles than any other community. I suppose the local Chamber of Commerce MIGHT be hushing this up, for fear of stampeding tourists. But this would violate the principle of this century that everything posted on the Interwebs in the last twelve hours is true and anything left unsaid must be untrue.
HOWEVER, I did find a certain amount of work on what the clock is telling us here. Yes, it IS telling us that the time is ten-ten, which MUST be a time of omen. It is NOT a suggestion that this double time announcement is especially good for canoodles, since that would contradict the sentiment of the postcard, that ANY time will do. (Besides, if you canoodle only at nine-nine and eleven-eleven or six-six, this leaves 48 minutes of every hour when you’ll need to find something else to do. Unless you have a ship’s clock and there ARE times of the day when it will be fourteen-fourteen or twenty-one twenty-one. Side note: is the new year one when we can all sing In the Year twenty—five twenty0-five without fear of retribution, or will the science fiction critics again…where were we?)
See, clock and watch advertisements for many years have shown 8:20 or 10:10. And the world is filled with people who want to assure us that this is not some vast international conspiracy. (They do us a lot of credit. I hardly ever notice what time is shown in watch ads. I am fairly clueless, of course, and had to look at my watch just now to see that it says 5:35. That may not alarm YOU, but my watch has said 5:35 for the last twelve years. Must get that new battery one of these days.)
See, apparently the people who DO observe these things created a sentimental narrative about the fact that the inventor of the wristwatch died at exactly 8:20, and watchmakers ever since have done honor to him in their ads. (The identity of this inventor isn’t always consistent, but maybe EVERY watch innovator died at 8:20.) OR this memorializes somebody else’s death. I especially like the theory that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 10:10 and that, years later Harry S Truman, who ordered the bombing, died at 10:10 himself. Both of these amazing facts are completely untrue, which never prevents a good conspiracy theory. Other people supposedly remembered who did NOT, in fact, die at 10:10 are Dr. Mating Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, or John Cameron Swayze (the spokesman for Timex watches, which “take a licking but keep on ticking.”) As someone who is working on a series of conspiracy theories himself, I would HATE to point out to anyone that I found NONE of these theories on line except in articles written to prove they weren’t true.
This conspiracy theory seems to be the True Fact. Eight twenty and ten ten are two times which keep the hands in full view and expose half the face of the watch or clock, thus allowing a good look at the logo of the manufacturer. These manufacturers liked to have their names at the TOP, which made 8:20 the favorite until some clever ad executives noted that this gave the clock a kind of a frowny face. Setting the watch at 10:10 makes the face smile. (Again, I hate to be THAT guy, but I always see the central point on the face as the nose, which makes the 10:10 clock a face with angry eyebrows. But this is why I am a blogger and not in the ad business. That and my tendency to hum random melodies when I should be working. “In the year 2525….”)
Blogsy Babbles 