Mantle Clock

This past weekend my younger daughter and I visited my mother in Frankfort. While we were there, she gave me something that I had told her years before that I wanted--a mantle clock. It was broken, and my mother told me I could take it with me if I would promise to get it fixed. I made the promise and put the clock in my car and drove home.

Before I tell you more about that day, though, I need to provide a little background info about the clock itself. When my parents were newlyweds, way back in 1955, they purchased the mantle clock for their new home with money that had been given to them by a relative. It was a rather simple, wind up mantle clock that at the top of each hour chimed the hour (It chimed once at one o'clock, twice at two o'clock, etc.) and that at the halfway point of each hour chimed a single time.

I was born more than a decade after the clock was purchased, so as far as I am concerned, this mantle clock has always existed. By the time I was born, though, my parents had moved from their first house to a new home without a fireplace, so throughout my youth the mantle clock set--not on a fireplace mantle--but on the dresser in my parents' bedroom.

Until I was about twelve years old, my bedroom adjoined my parents' bedroom, so that as I lay in bed falling asleep, or when I awoke in the middle of the night, I could hear the clock ticking, and I always knew what time of night it was at the top of the hour. Like every other child, I had irrational fears during elementary school (one of which I admitted to in this post). Sometimes I would lie in bed at night sure that some monster or another was going to get me, but the clock--because it was in my parents' room where I knew my mom and dad were both sleeping--was a comfort to me. It was a calm, tick tick tick reminding me that my parents were there; I was safe.

All of this I had forgotten until Saturday afternoon when I came home with the broken clock that I was going to get repaired. I set it down in the kitchen and then thought to myself, Where's that sound coming from? I looked at the clock--it was ticking like it had before it had broken. Apparently the clock had just been wound too tightly, and the 100 mile ride in the car had jostled the gears loose. I set the clock in the middle of the fireplace mantle at our house, and it's been ticking away ever since.

And it wasn't until I heard it chime in my own house that I realized much of what I had written above and how much the sound of the clock meant to me. When my mom and I were looking at it last Saturday afternoon, before my daughter and I headed for home, my mom said to me, "It's a Seth Thomas. When we bought it they told us it was the best brand to get. And it's been a good clock. Maybe it's worth something now." I checked on eBay when I got home. Apparently they are darned good little clocks. There are plenty of identical models for sale on eBay, all of which supposedly keep perfect time, just like this one. Asking price: 30 to 75 dollars. So I guess I'm NOT going to get rich off of the clock. Not that it matters. I wouldn't sell it anyway.

All that first night (and my family will attest to this if you ask them) I'd be in the middle of doing something--maybe having a conversation with my wife or doing the dishes after dinner--and I'd freeze, look at the time on my cell phone, and say, "Wait a second. The clock is getting ready to chime!" And I'd run into the living room, sit down, and wait for the whirring sound that occurred just before the clock rang, and then the steady "Clang, Clang, Clang," which my spirit translated as "You're Safe, You're Safe, You're Safe..."


(I can't see the video.)