Asakiyume mita

Your post re the Willard House and Clock Museum really caught my interest!

My paternal grandparents had a small jewelry and watch repair business in San Francisco, in the 1920s and 30s or so.

The story I recall being told is that Grandpa S. had been "in construction" before WWI, but that he retrained as a jeweler and watchmaker after being mustard-gassed in France. He lived another 20+ years in reduced health, working-working-working, with a very occasional break to go rock-hounding. He died before I was born.

As far as I know, Grandma S. was not formally trained in jewelry or watch repair, but she was a very craft-y person. Dad mentioned her restringing broken necklaces for the shop.

When I knew her, during my childhood, she taught me a bit about creating necklaces from loose beads and fittings, and also a bit about weaving. She tried to teach me knitting, as well, but I lacked the coordination for that, at the time.

My late dad and my paternal uncle grew up living in the back of that San Francisco shop, sometimes being required to "do the sweeping up, in front." My Dad spoke feelingly of hating to be in the shop at the top of an hour, because a lot of clocks would all sound off all once, making a horrible cacaphony.

I inherited a few pieces of jewelry that probably came from the shop, including a nice ladies' watch with Grandma S.'s initials engraved on the back of the case, plus a couple of booklets that were almost certainly marketing materials:

• A fold-up World Time Chart advertising Hamilton timepieces, dated 1944 and with clear references to wartime in the copy, and
  
  
• Volume One of "Romance and History of Time," by Roy Rutherford Bailey, sixty-some soft-bound pages of stories and color illustrations related to time and timepieces, copyright 1922, "compiled by the Elgin National Watch Company." This has a separately printed sheet attached inside the front cover, bearing a rather fulsome blurb, and with the name and address of my grandparents' shop printed at the bottom of the page.