I made a cool discovery this week. I did not know how interesting it was until I got home and looked it up on that Internet thang.

On a desolate stretch of road in some far off butthole part of Queens I noticed a little metal box affixed to a fence. The box was small enough that I would not have noticed it if the bright sun did not hit it such that it gleamed. The box had the words “DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION” on its lid.

DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION

DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION

Opening it revealed nothing but a small amount of dirt.

DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION

DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION

I later learned that in the past this box contained a key. The key would have been used by a security guard to check in at the station to prove they were doing their job of patrolling the premises. The security guard carried a mechanical clock and the key was used on the clock to record the time and location of the check-in on a piece of paper. The boss would review these papers to verify that the guards had made the rounds to all the watchclock stations on the premises.

As archaic as it sounds the DETEX company was still manufacturing these devices as recently as 2011, and one assumes that this system was still in use at that time.

I don’t know how rare it really is to see these things but I felt like I’d encountered something pretty unusual out in the wilds of Queens in this year 2016.

What is now making me crazy is that I am all but certain I have seen these stations before, I just did not realize what they were and I cannot remember where I saw them. I vaguely remember a red or maroon colored container like this affixed to a brick wall, and another silver one on a fence someplace. But where? I was thinking Honeywell Street Bridge or somewhere around Sunnyside Yards, but I just can’t remember.

If my foggy memory of seeing them holds up then I think it will be that those stations made less of an impression on me because they did not have words on them. Without the text lettering on them they would be far less noticeable. I also think that if I thought anything of these little containers it was that they were ash trays, which is probably all they are used for nowadays.

I left a dime in this watchclock station as a prize for the next person who discovers it and finds it as charming a curio as did I.

DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION

DETEX WATCHCLOCK STATION

So, not that I needed it, but now I have a new object on which to focus my otaku-like fixations. Add watchclock stations to payphones, red emergency call boxes, mailboxes, spots painted on sewers, telephone numbers in the old exchange name format, etc…