#58 A WOMAN’S BRIEFS --CLOCKS January 25, 2025

I have in our small apartment three pendulum-driven clocks. Really now, three within eighteen steps of each other. They came to me in this order:

The turn of the century German Grandfather clock with a strike to rival Big Ben’s, stands at a living room wall shared with our bedroom. So acclimated are we that during the night we never hear the hammers slam the chime rods.

Houseguests however, two room away, have on occasion lifted straight up from sleep at the strike of an hour, thinking perhaps the rapture has commenced and they are left behind.

This clock came to our house in the mid-1970s when I stepped into an antique store with a friend who was picking up something she recently purchased. It struck an hour while my back was turned.

“You neglected my simple frame, but you heard my voice,” it seemed to say.

My husband brought the pickup truck to haul it home. I have listened to it on the hour and the half ever since. Like my solid maple butcher block, this clock will live where I do for as long as I have any say about it.

Next to our front door hangs a long case clock. What matters about this non-chiming clock is that my jeweler-clockmaker Grandfather Roberts pulled together scrap parts and built it from scratch. He didn’t build the case. That came from England. The outer rim of the face is the top off of some container, and the rim around the second-hand face is from a can his wife cut open in her kitchen while a meal was being prepared. Notice, if you can, the second tics are penned by his hand on card stock paper. This clock doesn’t have to speak. It wears its story. It’s family. 

Our third clock, a Daneker Floor clock, stands in its solid maple case just inside my office. My father, who rarely shopped for anything other than motor parts and toolbox items, purchased this clock. He loved it. I loved him, and his clock. After his death it came to me. The Daneker has three winding points. One for the Westminster chime, one for the Big Ben strike, and one to keep the pendulum swinging. 

Here now, the story. Last August, Bob the Clock Guy came for all three clocks. Two needed cleaning, the Daneker needed repair. As he was leaving our apartment with clock parts on a cart, I happened to ask when they might be back.

“Three months,” came the answer from the much-in-demand clock smith. 

“I should never have sent all three at once,” I said to my husband later. “That was a big mistake.”

I was right. After two weeks of constantly checking three empty walls for time and chime, of feeling an emptiness like having a front tooth missing, I called Bob. I begged.

“Can you just bring one back? You don’t need to fix it. I’ll pay you. Just bring one back.” Thank God I never smoked. I’m obviously a deeply dependent person. I needed a clock.

“Can you make it to the end of the month?” he asked (now, how nice was that). 

On August 30th, he returned our cleaned Grandfather clock. Singing bowls deliver calm, I know. I love their sound, but nothing quieted my spirit like the booming strikes flying from the living room corner.

On November 30th, as promised, Bob returned the two other clocks. They worked perfectly, but then, the Daneker didn’t. After a week its chime slowed, then stopped altogether. 

I messaged Bob. 

Soon, it no longer struck the hour. It tried some but gave up.

I messaged Bob. 

Then, the clock stopped running altogether. 

“Is it wound tight?” asked Bob. 

Tight as Calvin Klein jeans on a young Brooke Shields, but I didn’t say that. Wound it was, I was sure, but working, it wasn’t. 

I messaged Bob.

I messaged frequently, describing my efforts to keep the clock running. Bob asked good questions. Like, Have I wound it? 

That was the funny thing, I said. The darned thing, two of its points were wound so tight that they hadn’t unwound since he brought the clock back. Maybe he overwound it? 

“Impossible,” said Bob.

“But true,” I countered.

“I’m coming to Gig Harbor on Friday, January 24th. I’ll stop by.”

That Friday (last Friday), I watched over his shoulder as he removed the clock’s hood and took a look at the innards. 

“Where’s the key?” he asked. 

I handed it over. He started winding the chimes. He moved to the striker point and wound that. He wound and wound.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“What?”

“Unwind those points.”

“They were unwound,” he said. If his magnifying eye piece hadn’t been pushed onto his forehead, he may well have used it to examine my stupid question.

“The only thing wrong with you clock is that it needed winding.

“But I could hardly move the key. It felt wound tight.” As I was demurring, Bob put my hand on the key and told me to turn it. I couldn’t.

“You’re working against a very tight main spring,” he said. You’ve got to force that thing until it won’t budge another tick.

It felt wound. It wasn’t. 

“You can’t hurt it. Wind until it tells you, ‘No more.’ I probably should I have told you that,” he said. He pointed out the beautiful parts hidden behind the face, handed me the winding key, and replaced the hood.

I can’t help it. Everything is a lesson for me, and this one was. I thought the clock was wound. Day after day I put pressure on the winding points, and day after day, it resisted. I do mean really resisted. It had a strong kick.

“You’ve got a powerful mainspring there,” Bob said. Even the booklet stored in the bottom of the clock’s case says,

“Be sure to wind the clock until the constant winding pressure will no longer tighten the spring. There is a definite stop encountered when the clock has been fully wound. Do not be afraid of winding it too tight.”

Sometimes, we just have to push past fear, past really hard resistance, if we mean to achieve, if we want time to matter, and if we want to hear the chiming.