The watch!
Here's my paternal great-grandfather, Francis Gersbach, known to us as Pargie. He's so dapper! Mention of his name always elicited the same response - "Oh, he was a lovely (old) man". This wasn't only from my Dad and his sister, Pat, but my Mum, her Mum and even Mum's friends. Everyone knew him well as he shared a home with my paternal grandparents, worked in the family grocery business with my grandfather and was never short of a story. He was responsible for carving the Sunday roast and did it with great precision, I'm told. Pargie died six years before I was born but I've always felt close to him. He was on a bus from Neutral Bay to Crows Nest to exchange a suit that he'd purchased earlier in the day when he had a heart attack and died shortly after. He was eight-six. From the inscription, Pargie was wearing the watch in the photo. He was surely wearing it on that fateful bus journey in 1947 as he was always well dressed. The inscription read