Joseph Dabbah has not labeled all of the tiny drawers in his cabinets. No cash register sits at the front counter, and the storage room consists of a few boxes atop a dusty chest.

The downtown Baltimore shop is more like a home than an impersonal place of business -- Dabbah knows the location of everything. Over 40 years, he has arranged the little watch shop to his liking.

So much so that he wouldn't let just any clock-and-watchmaker take his place.

Dabbah, 77, is trying to find someone as devoted to watchmaking and repair as he to take over the business at Calvert and Lombard streets.

"Somebody was supposed to be a partner, and he chickened out," Dabbah says. "I don't give it to no one I know is crook or anything."

Dabbah once assumed that his son, Albert Dabbah, would take his place. Now, Albert is a plastic surgeon.

Watchmaking and repairing are skills that Dabbah believes are passed down within families, so he looks favorably upon sons of watchmakers.

At his Exactime Watch and Clock Repair, the furniture is small, and the lights are dim. Dabbah has accumulated boxes full of orphaned clocks and watches since 1959. Twenty, 30, even 40 years ago, Dabbah says, their owners dropped them off for repairs but never came back. He hasn't sold a single one, though.

"If your father or mother left something to you, would you sell it?" Dabbah asks. "I don't like to sell them. They will not make me rich or poor. Many times I call It takes a while, but they come and pick it up sometimes."

Sentiment surrounds his craft.

"Long time ago, you buy better watch to keep better time. But now, all watches keep accurate time," he says, "It's cheaper to buy a new watch than to fix it. Why you fix yours? You follow me? You keep for the sentimental thing."

Dabbah has kept many a "sentimental thing." Certificates, thank-you letters and rusted clocks from the 1930s clutter his walls, but Dabbah is most sentimental about watchmaking itself.

"It's been his life," says Dabbah's daughter, Claudette Jacob, a nurse in Howard County. "And he's trying to wind things down now, so I'm sure he would love somebody to carry things on, but I'm not sure that's possible."

A native of Cairo, Egypt, Dabbah worked as a watch and instrument repairer for the British army during their occupation of Egypt in the 1940s. He then spent 2 1/2 years working at Chartier & Marcus, a clock manufacturer in Paris, before coming to Baltimore in 1959.

He smiles now, content with his life's work, and tells a story about counting even the simplest blessings.

"They say in Egypt, look at your hand. How many fingers do you have? Five," he says. "I am very lucky, I believe it. When you do good, you see good and God with you."

If he does not find a partner or watchmaker to take over the shop, "whatever the God wants, whatever nature wants," he says.

Pub Date: 3/22/99