Time Stand Still

Every Friday I climb the stairs, three fights, to a clock tower and I wind the Town Clock. Not a small mantle clock or grandfathers clock, but a big honkin' "Back to the Future" clock. In 1888, my great-great grandfather and the elders of our small Baltimore county town got together and decided to raise money for a large town clock. After donations and an oyster roast fundraiser, enough money was acquired to purchase a clock from the Howard clock company in Boston.

Every Friday I climb the stairs, three fights, to a clock tower and I wind the Town Clock. Not a small mantle clock or grandfathers clock, but a big honkin' "Back to the Future" clock. In 1888, my great-great grandfather and the elders of our small Baltimore county town got together and decided to raise money for a large town clock. After donations and an oyster roast fundraiser, enough money was acquired to purchase a clock from the Howard clock company in Boston. Because of his proximity to the clock's location, my great-great grandfather accepted the responsibility of caring and winding the clock. It is essentially a gigantic grandfathers clock complete with large weights that must be raised once a week. Care of the clock included oiling, resetting time, changing light bulbs and replacing the odd part every now and then.

This responsibility was passed down generation after generation to me. It's not particularly difficult, you just need to be persistent. When my father died, I had already been caring for the clock for 20 years, 10 of which I'd done on my own because my father couldn't climb the stairs and ladders needed to wind the clock.

In honor of my father, I foolishly decided to stop the clock at the time, 3:35pm, of his passing and not restart until after the funeral. After the funeral I faced the ancient oversized timepiece and gave the 7 foot pendulum a shove. It clicked tick-toc for a few minutes and slowed to a stop. Another gentle shove and again it slowed until the tick-toc disappeared. The clock was broken. What had I done?

The Town Clock, or Big Ed as it's known, had been running for 112 years with nary a hitch and now one day after my father died it was broken. No one knew that I'd been winding it for 20 years. All they knew was that once Jimmy had died, the clock must not be cared for. With all the normal stress involved with the passing of a parent, now I had to fix a town clock. Who do you call??? What Yellow Pages category do you flip to? Google to the rescue. I found a man in Baltimore who worked on the Bromo clock in downtown Baltimore but he couldn't help. I found another possibility in DC. Nope. Couldn't help. A third guy was in the paper for fixing the large town clock in Westminster Md. After much searching I finally spoke to him and he was willing to at least look at the clock.

He was an amateur small clock repairman. What did I have to lose? We met. He reminded me of a slightly more articulate Taxi's Rev. Jim Ignatowsky. I lead him up the stairs and into the clock tower. He surveys the machinery and gently pushes and rotates various gears and wheels. He then proceeds to open his fishing tackle box and remove a hammer. This should have been a huge red flag.

I'd always been taught to treat the clock with kid gloves, a delicate precision piece that required delicate and precise attention. That's why I let out an audible gasp when Rev Jim lifted the hammer and smacked the anchor wheel soundly. "Bam!" And again "Bam! And a third time. "Bam". The anchor wheel couldn't take the abuse and it snapped. Parts flew. My eyes widened with incredulity. "Didn't expect that." Rev Jim said.

He then explained, as he quickly gathered the shattered parts, that he had a guy that could fix it and it'd be fine. Desperate as I was, I believed him. A couple of weeks and we'd have new parts, he said. The clock would be whole again and everything would be fine.

I waited. And I waited. Weeks. Months. Phone call after phone call went unanswered. Messages left began cordial enough. "Hey, this is Jeff. Just wanted an update. How are things going? Call me please." After several weeks of no response, things devolved into "Listen here you son of a bitch, I want my goddamn parts back. I'm calling the police if you don't clear this up immediately!"

One big problem, I had no idea where he lived. The only contact I had was his cell phone and he was unlisted in the phone book. After a bit of internet sleuthing, I found him on a small, closed internet forum for watch repairers. His profile had another phone number that led me to an address. I took off for his house.

The neighborhood where he lived was a quaint 1950 brick home neighborhood with cliche white picket fences, adorable mailboxes and perfectly kept yards. I turned the corner to his street and knew I was in trouble. His house was in massive disrepair. Knee high grass with half hidden car parts strewn about, fallen gutters, and peeling paint. It was a beautiful summer day and his front door was open.

I marched up and was about to rap on the screen door when the mess and clutter of the front room stopped me. It was a house straight out of the Hoarders TV show. Stacks and stacks of newspapers, mail, disassembled clocks, bike parts and food. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied legs of a man sitting on a couch. He had a laptop computer on his lap and his pants around his ankles.

I rapped on the screen door. The laptop almost went flying as he jumped to his feet startled. He came to the door and I'd found him. The Jim Ignatowski character stood in front of me, shirtless, bandana doo-rag, buttoning his jeans and stammering. "I want my parts." I said. More stammering. "Give me my parts. We're done".

He explained that he didn't have them. He'd sent them to the guy in New York. I demanded to know his name and the company. He told me and I turned and left. Back at work I called the man that had my clock parts. He answered and I explained who I was and who I had been dealing with.

He acknowledged knowing the guy I'd been fighting with and he remembered helping him on a job four years earlier, but he hadn't spoken to him since that job. He knew nothing of my clock or its parts.

My head damn near exploded. I jumped back in my car and drove with the fury of a cop on a manhunt. But when I got there the doors were locked and his car was missing. He was gone. I returned several times till I finally found him again, this time with his pants, thankfully, in its full and upright position. He feebly apologized and began scouring his cluttered living room for parts. He handed me a box with big parts, a baggy of screws, a loose piece of metal, another small box with a few brackets and finally a ziplock with cogs. "Is this all?" I said. He said it was. I didn't believe him but I just wanted to be done with him. I took my parts and left.

I called the man in New York, Chuck, and asked him to look at the clock and see if he could help. He graciously agreed. It took a few weeks, but he got it reassembled and running.... until it stopped a few days later.

Throughout this ordeal, Chuck had scolded me for over greasing the clock. It was true that the cogs and gears had copious amounts of oil covering its parts. I'd been taught by my father, and him by his father, that every Spring you grease the clock. Two of us would climb and reach and stretch to almost every part and apply a decent amount of light oil. Chuck taught me that oil attracts dust and dirt and that causes friction. And friction, for a precision timepiece, is bad.

But as I lay in bed, stress causing my heart to pound uncontrollably, at my wits end as to how to fix this non-time-keepping monster, one thought popped into my head... Oil!

The next morning, I climbed the stairs once again and, all by myself, I oiled up the whole thing. Closing my eyes and saying a silent prayer, I gave the 7 ft long pendulum a gentle push. It hasn't stopped since.