Some folks
have said this story is just something we made up. It’s not.
If you are a skeptic, you may not appreciate it as much as the rest
of us, but please don’t doubt, because it is true…
The clock was given as
a gift on August 26, 1881 to Katherine Lindsay’s family and
is labeled inside as an Eight Day Brass Clock manufactured by Seth
Thomas. Nothing fancy. Katherine had painted her signature flowers
on the glass front, and the face has been re-painted somewhere along
the way with an unsteady hand, it’s full of dings and dents.
The clock hangs on the
wall behind Charles’ desk and the tradition is to wind it
every Sunday. When Charles was alive, all the workers would file
in on Sunday mornings, ready to go, and like "clockwork"
Charles would yell out at the top of his lungs "Has anyone
wound the clock!?". It was a pattern, one of those habits,
just like stumbling to the kitchen and making coffee in the morning.
One of the men would say, "Yes Charles", and if they hadn’t
already, they would dutifully open the glass front, find the key
in the dust and turn it so the two heavy weights on either side
would climb to the top. This would happen every week, without fail.
One Sunday morning I
filed in along with all the other workers, ready to go. As expected,
we heard from Charles at his desk, "Has anyone wound the clock!?".
I don’t know what it was that morning, but I needed to know
why this clock winding ritual, why such urgency? So I asked. Charles
looked at me and said in a low voice, "Because when that clock
stops, I die.". Now I knew Charles fairly well and I knew he
was serious about this. "Oh" I said, and never asked again.
I just kept a mental note to help keep that clock running. And it
ran. Never stopped, at least as long as I had been around. Then
as years past Charles became progressively more ill, finally to
the point that we couldn’t care for him at the shop any longer.
He moved to the local nursing home, but commuted daily to the shop.
The old man worked seven days a week, nine to five. We kept that
clock ticking.
Finally Charles did have
to leave us. He died on September 8, 1992 at 6:20 p.m. Everyone
had left the shop at about 6 to go out for dinner. When we returned,
we noticed the clock had stopped at 6:20. The weights were still
near the top.
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