Keeper of a lost art

Longtime watch repairman shows no sign of stopping

MOSES LAKE — Time doesn't stand still for Jim Ganiere.

In his years as a watch repairman, he has seen his share of watches that have come to a stop. But with a little bit of work, he's been able to get them up and going.

Ganiere said he has never failed to get a watch running again, although some of them have given him "a little headache," he said. Some watches have been lost while swimming; a few owners find them still running after several weeks underwater.

"It gets kind of interesting when you see those, and then there's watches that have gone through everything under the sun," he said. "It's amazing sometimes what the watches can take and still be repairable or keep on running. For such a delicate little instrument, they're pretty tough."

Ganiere began repairing watches working in a Montana jewelry store in 1958.

"In 1957, I went down and talked to the guy, he gave me a bunch of old used watches, a few tools and he says, 'Go home and see if you like it,'" Ganiere recalled. "I puttered around with it, go down and asked him questions, and he supplied me with old watches and things there so I could kind of practice."

After a year, Ganiere began working at the store while he was in high school. A year after graduation, he attended Spokane Technical School, which changed its name to Spokane Community College while he was in attendance there, and took the two-year watch repair course.

"The fella back in Montana actually taught me watch repair," he said. "He was taught by another jeweler, so he had no formal training … When I went to school, I basically just needed the technical end. I had the mechanical end as far as repairing in there. So that was a big plus going to school, that made it real easy."

He paid for his schooling working at different jewelry and watch repair shops, and "barely survived" for a year in Spokane following graduation from the community college, as he had just gotten married to his wife of 41 years, Sharrie.

"It was kind of a tough go because wages were really low and the competition was fierce," he said.

In 1965, Moses Lake businessman Huck Menti owned Menti Jewelers, at the site of what is presently Baby, Naturally! Menti's watchmaker was setting off on his own, so Menti hired Ganiere, who went on to work for him for 24 years.

Ganiere got his own watch from Menti back in the early 1970s, and has worn it almost every day since then.

"I still kind of treasure this one, because it was really a special watch," he said, noting that he got it as a Christmas present the second or third year he was there. "It's kind of ancient; it's got old technology, but I still like it."

Ganiere's never had to repair the watch.

In 1989, Miller's Fine Jewelers, Inc. took over the operation and moved to its location at 111 W. Third Ave. When owner Don Miller died, Todd Leavitt bought the store in the late 1990s.

Ganiere took several courses along the way in advanced watch repair, while they were offered in Spokane, and courses for specific watch companies.

For years, he had strictly done watch repair, but upon moving into Miller's, he began jewelry repair, moving on from the basics into advanced jewelry repair, advanced stone setting and fabrication.

"It was kind of a nice way to go, because at the time, the quartz watches were really coming into their own, and watch repair was really dropping back," he said. "Quartz watches are much more dependable, require less service."

With watch repair on the decline, many of the schools closed. Now there's very few places to go and get training in watch repair, Ganiere said, noting that there are a few trade schools in Seattle. Many of the people in that field have gone into the electronics field, he said.

When people find out today what Ganiere does for a living, he says the response is typically, "Not many of those around any more, are there?"

"It's almost kind of a lost art," he said. "Most of the stores send their work out for repair now. They send the (watch repair and jewelry) work to trade shops. Basically, take it in, send it out and get it back. To have a full-service jewelry store like this, it's not rare, but there's not a lot of them."

Ganiere said he enjoys the people and the challenge that comes with the work.

"You get a little bit of everything," he said. "Some of them come in just about destroyed and they want them rebuilt, and then a lot of it is just basic service work, tune-ups, cleaning and things like that."

Jewelry goes through a similar process, as well as alterations.

The work is not hard physically, but it can be challenging mentally, he said. Right now, the turnaround on repair work is about eight days. Used to be, a good turnaround was about three to four days, but the repair business has really picked up in the last year, and those people that do specialty work for the business, like casting and manufacturing, have gone from a week to about three to four weeks.

"The whole trade, right now, is quite busy," he said, adding that mechanical watches had all but disappeared until the last year. The Swiss are pushing mechanical watches heavily right how, he said, although in Moses Lake more people tend to gravitate towards work watches over watches he called more "dressy.

"The farmers here, they're not into diamond watches and gold watches," he said with a chuckle. "They just want something they can take out and beat around."

Ganiere said he wants people to come away feeling that he's done a good job for them after he's repaired something for them.

"We want people to be happy with the jewelry that we sell, and we want them to be happy with the jewelry that we repair," he said. "We don't want people wearing things they don't like."

Ganiere said he doesn't have any sights on retirement.

"I'll work here as long as they keep me hanging around, I guess," he said.