dewalt tools : Father Time winds down

CANTON Tony Carlone is a throwback, just like many of the antique watches and grandfather clocks he brought back to life during the last 64 years.

The 86-year-old still loves to work his craft. But his eyes have failed him. After surgery, his vision is improving. But sharp eyesight is essential to working with tiny pieces and parts.

It’s the main reason Carlone is shutting down his watch shop at 334 Fourth St. NW between Dewalt and Cleveland avenues. Monday was his last day, ending an era and one of the area’s longest tenured businesses.

“My hand is still steady,” he said, extending his right hand as proof. “But it’s my eyes.

“I could still do the work if the eyes were good.”

DYING ART

Carlone is a dying breed — a watch doctor. He sits on a custom-made chair, about a foot off the floor. Extra padding in the chair arms provides relief as he meticulously labored on watches and clocks for up to 10 hours a day.

“I feel bad I can’t serve my customers,” he said. “This business is dying like the horse and buggy.”

“We’re not modern,” he boasted of his business, as if it’s a badge of honor. “We’re still back in the ’40s. I wish we could go back to those years.”

He has fixed Dueber-Hampden watches, relics from the old factory in Canton that produced timepieces in the early 1900s. He also has worked on watches damaged in World War II.

In fact, Carlone learned the trade “from a guy who worked at Dueber-Hampden” who opened a jewelry shop in Minerva when the factory closed. Following a back surgery mishap, Carlone lost the use of his legs when he was 19 years old, then opened his own shop in his early 20s.

“I kept moving,” he said.

LOYAL CUSTOMERS

Carlone knows his customers, even if he can’t see them as well as he used to.

On Friday, when somebody walked through the door, Carlone could not clearly make out the woman standing in front of the counter. The shopkeeper shut his eyes, bowing his head and clasping his hands, concentrating to recognize the patron by voice.

Carlone will miss his customers.

“I love them all,” he said. “Thanks for your business.”

Despite the decline of the watch-repair trade, many customers have kept coming back, even as battery-operated watches and cell phones with built-in clocks became popular.

These days, most watches aren’t built to last, Carlone said. “In the old days, they could give a watch to you for graduation and you could hand it down to your grandchildren, and it would last you that long.”

He’s sold jewelry, but his specialty has been fixing “old, old wristwatches,” with assistance from his 89-year-old brother, Biaggio.

As of Friday, his tools were still everywhere. Pliers, a dozen or so screwdrivers. A flashlight, toothbrush, fingernail clippers, small hammer, magnifying glass. Scissors and brushes overflowed from a coffee cup. More than 50 small plastic drawers were stocked with watch parts.

Nothing compares to the job, Carlone said: “It’s an achievement that you’ll get gratitude out of, like breathing new life into something that was dead.”

WHO GETS A WATCH FIXED?

So who in today’s world gets a watch or clock repaired?

Carlone balks at the question. Sure, business has slowed since he opened in the early 1940s. But a few days before closing the shop, customers — or friends as he affectionately calls them — trickled through the door, walking underneath the faded, handmade sign hanging outside the entrance. Not to say goodbye; most didn’t know Carlone was closing the cozy and cluttered shop.

They stopped in for a new battery or with the intention of dropping off a windup watch to get repaired.

“The service he’s given me pans out,” said Wilbert Coleman, 76, of Canton. “It lasts.”

Clocks and watches also may hold sentimental value. A grandmother passes on a watch to a granddaughter. An antique clock is part of an estate. Some folks grow fond of a particular watch. Others simply don’t like to buy a new one unless it’s the only sensible option.

Some are not sure where to turn now that Carlone is retiring.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” lamented Ruby Adams, a customer of about 20 years. “I have no idea. He’s the last of the original craftsman in watch repair, because people who are craftsmen and who really know these jobs ... they’re all gone, you can’t find them anymore.”

By ED BALINT