Papa Martel (1961)

Gérard Robichaud's novel in ten parts, copyright 1961 and originally published by Doubleday, follows Louis Martel, a French Canadian born on a poor farm near St. John, New Brunswick, and his family in an apartment on Oak Street in Groveton, Maine. Each part is an episode in the family's life, and the paperback's cover sums it up as the story of a fiercely affectionate father, his exceptional wife and their seven children. (Open Library)

Watches

Ingersoll watch: In the part called "The Bad One", the Martels take in Sophia, an orphan with a reputation, to share a room with their daughter Thérèse. One Saturday night the two girls stay out on a porch down the street until a quarter past eleven and Louis is furious; they did not know it was so late, the excuse runs, and "I have no watch". That stumps him. He takes two one-dollar Ingersoll watches from his pants pocket, listens to the ticking of each, and hands one to Sophia. Years later, on the eve of a wedding, the children of the family go through his pockets and find a large Ingersoll watch with a rosary that needs fixing, a pocket knife and a pouch of tobacco (p. 217). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: He reached into his pants pocket and took out two one-dollar Ingersoll watches. First he listened to the ticking of one, and then of the other. Then he handed one to Sophia. (Gérard Robichaud, Papa Martel, scan cataloged as Hodder & Stoughton, first printed in Great Britain 1962, p. 87, in "The Bad One", whose running head dates it 1923; Internet Archive scan OCR)