The Spyglass Tree (1991)

The Spyglass Tree

Albert Murray's novel, published by Pantheon in 1991, continues the story of Scooter that began in Train Whistle Guitar: where the earlier book followed his boyhood in a small Southern town in the 1920s, this one is, in the jacket's words, a bildungsroman of Scooter's growth into manhood at college in the Deep South in the 1930s, told in Murray's blues-inflected first person. (Open Library)

Watches

Elgin watch

On their first night in the room his roommate labels Atelier 359, Scooter and his new roommate talk in the dark past curfew. The roommate tells how the Old Trooper took him shopping by limousine for his freshman wardrobe in Chicago, and Scooter counts his own graduation gifts from home: a Gladstone bag from Miss Slick McGinnis, a looseleaf notebook from Miss Lexine Metcalf and an Elgin wristwatch from Mister B. Franklin Fisher himself. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: when I told him that my Gladstone bag was my graduation gift from Miss Slick McGinnis in New York and that my cowhide looseleaf all-purpose notebook was from Miss Lexine Metcalf and my Elgin wristwatch was from Mister B. Franklin Fisher himself (Albert Murray, The Spyglass Tree, scan cataloged as Pantheon Books, 1991, p. 13; the room and the late-night talk are on p. 12; Internet Archive scan OCR)