When You Are In A War …

… you should buy a Rolex.

I watched Antique Roadshow while I was cooking beef curry for dinner tonight.

I make really good beef curry.

It’s always a hodge podge of stuff; this time it was left over New York cut sliced thin, shallots, broccoli and jalapeno, all also sliced thin.

Each ingredient gets its time in the wok on its own with the meat getting a light touch after the others are finished.

I chose tandoori curry powder from the various jars of curry that I have accumulated from the Pike Market.

The whole thing got turned out on steamed rice.

It was quite good.

But back to the war: there was an old ex-USAF hippy – not too different from me, except he has a lot of hair and is 8 to 10 years younger than I am – who had bought a Rolex at a Base Exchange in Thailand in 1974.

He had paid $374 for it at the time.

As luck had had it, he hadn’t ever worn it and had kept all the Rolex paperwork and BX receipts and all that sort of thing.

Not wearing it has left a foil thing from Rolex on the back of the watch; sweat and such would have removed that foil over time; but it has not been removed.

So it is a new watch from the point of view of collectors.

And, he had never sent in the Rolex warranty registration.

That alone was worth $1000.

The watch was worth $700,000.

Something about Paul Newman, they said.

I have a Sanyo 1.5 cubic foot refrigerator with a dent on its top that I bought in Vietnam, a bronze star and a memoir that I wrote about that Vietnam thing.

The Sanyo still works.

I loaned it to my mother in law in her waning days in a senior center in Idaho.

Until she died.

I don’t know what she kept in it.

In Vietnam I kept salami in it.

And vodka.

I like cold vodka.

I doubt that the refrigerator, the bronze star or the memoir are worth much.

The star has an accompanying picture of General Philpot, though.

I have heard that accompanying documentation makes things more valuable.