My grandmother had a clock that sat on her mantel. It was not fancy, but it chimed on the hour and once on the half hour. It was a Seth Thomas brand, manufactured in 1947 and was given to my grandmother as a birthday gift by the family. As a child I grew up listening to this clock chime and when my grandmother died, I inherited the clock. We were living in Stockbridge at the time and had a fireplace in the basement. The mantel became the clock’s new home.
Some years later a wood stove was installed in front of the fireplace. One year during Christmas, the mantel was decorated with plastic ivy and Christmas stockings were hung across the face of the mantel. With the wood stove banked and the vents closed, we went to bed. Sometime around midnight, we awoke to find the house full of smoke. My wife Bobbie went for our daughter Christy and I went to wake our boys, Glenn and Gregg, who were both teenagers at the time. I went into their room and shouted for them to, “get up, the house is on fire and we need to get out!” Neither of them moved. I started shaking them to wake them up, but it was not happening. I was in the process of dragging them out, when they finally started to move on their own.
After everybody was clear, I went in to see what was burning. It turned out that one end of the plastic ivy had fallen down on top of the wood stove. It had melted and burned back up to the mantel. There was no real fire, just molten plastic. The heat from the melting plastic had, however, cracked the glass on the front of the clock and the clock no longer kept perfect time. I put the clock away for safe keeping, but could no longer enjoy the memories that its chime brought back. For the next twenty years the hours were silent.
One day, I ran into a friend who said that he was in the clock repair business. I pulled out the old, dusty clock and took it to him. He replaced the glass and a couple bushings and the clock was back to its original glory. I put it on a shelf above the TV and every time it chimes, it reminds me of time spent at my grandparents’ house. A few years later, the clock began to slow down. It was losing about 10 minutes per day. The original repairman was gone. I searched around and found another repairman who lubricated the clock and got it working. He told me that the clock needed lubrication about every three years. I had always been under the impression that the only people who worked on clocks were clockmakers and fools, but the next issue I had with the clock I fixed myself. I am one year older than this clock and have had to have a few repairs myself, but for now, the seventy-two year old clock sits above my TV keeping perfect time and I’m still listening to it chime on cue.
