I recently was rearranging some things in my house and moved a old clock from the living room to the bedroom. In the process, the grandfather clock started ticking and continued to do so for nearly three days.
The grandfather clock was one that belonged to my maternal great grandfather. It needs to be wound every so often and I don’t recall the last time I had it running. As I moved it from one room to another and repositioned it, it started to tick tock, tick tock. The pendulum swung back and forth and the familiar tick tock continued. Every hour, it would chime to tell what hour it was….every half hour, chiming once to tell you it was half past the hour.
I didn’t think it would continue to run for more than a few hours. I was amazed to hear it still ticking for the next three days before finally winding down. I paused and reflect while I lay in bed that this was the same familiar tick tock sounds that my great grandparents had listened to while they were still living. The chimes on the hour and half hour were the same ones that graced their home for who-knows how many years. And I found that to be really cool.
I’m trying to decide whether to leave the clock in my bedroom or move it back to the living room. While the tick tock of passing seconds is soothing, the chimes on the hour and half hour can startle one in the middle of the night. Perhaps there is a switch of some sort that can be disabled for the nightime hours. I will investigate and use the key to wind the clock back up for another cycle, chimes or not.
Once again, I just found it fascinating that the clock had survived lo these many years in good working order. And the fact that here in 2024, I’m listening to the same sounds that they did at least sixty years ago. Such is a part of the amazing world in which we live.
David Lee
David Lee 