Send Not to Ask for Whom the Clock Ticks

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Send Not to Ask for Whom the Clock Ticks

 

“Time is but the stream I go afishing in.”

 

•  Thoreau
   
  Several decades ago I bought a clock at Jerry’s Family Pharmacy on Main Street in Kirbyville.  When I bought the clock the mere fact of buying a clock would not have been worthy of mention.  Now it is, because clocks are uncommon.
   
  People seldom determine the time from clocks or watches.  In the mornings tiny little made-in-China Orwellian telescreens wake up their obedient humans, who then pass the rest of the day, heads humbly bowed, perusing, viewing, reading, or hearing their masters.  When a modern wishes to know the time, he (the pronoun is gender-neutral because calling one person “they” is barbaric) pulls from the recesses of his garmenting his Orwellian telescreen.  Then he reads his twits, twoots, and Me-mails, slides the news to see what some embalmed personality has done further to degrade himself, and goes back to the Me-mail as a validation of his existence.
   
  In 1914 no man would have worn a wristwatch because they were “sissy.”  That changed with trench warfare, and the suddenly manly wristwatch enjoyed a century of service and adornment.  In 2014, though, a modern young man would no more wear a wristwatch than he would stand up when his mother enters the room.
   
  As with watches, buying a clock is worthy of note as a curious activity from a bygone day, rather like not wearing camouflage at a funeral.
   
  This clock was made in the USA by a company that still exists as an office somewhere but which has long since farmed out the construction of clocks, for the few eccentrics who want one, to China.  The mechanism for ringing the alarm gave out years ago, but the clock continued its dependable tick-tick-tick (being a superior sort of clock, it refused ever to tock) until a sad day not long ago when its winding mechanism would not wind.  After its final day as an intact ticking clock its spring wound down for the last time.  It ticked no more.
   
  As would any good American, I took the clock apart to explore its innards.  The key had stripped its threads (dang, after only twenty or thirty years…).  I wound the clock with pliers, and once again it tick-tick-ticked nicely. 
   
  The clock machinery now resides on my desk, wound each day with a pair of pliers (made-in-China) kept handy for the purpose.  It is wonderfully inaccurate, gaining or losing about five minutes each day, but it is aesthetically pleasing as an objet d’art.  Three metal stampings bound together with slender bolts form a matrix for the springs, gears, and escapement wheel, all of which can now be seen in action.  The hour hand and minute hand, painted with some luminescent material that would probably give the EPA the Aunt Pittypat vapors, still glow briefly in the dark after lights out.
   
  The ticking is curiously comforting, reminding the tick-hearer of Jerry’s Family Pharmacy, a happy heartbeat for Main Street, now just another dark and empty storefront and an empty place in the hearts of those who remember good ol’ Jerry Nobles and his wheezy jokes.  The castoff 1950s chairs and table where old men made merry and told stories over coffee are all gone, as are most of the old men, as are the stories.
   
  But only for us, and only for a time, for in God’s omnipresence no happiness ever really goes away, not from Him. 
   
  Tick, tick, tick…
   
  -30-