12/15/2025
The Clock Princess
When I bought the clock from Kelly, a grizzled old flea marketer selling out of his car in front of Elliott's shop, it was a jumble of parts. The case was falling apart, nearly every glue joint had let go. The chime and pendulum weight were rusty, and there was a dusty green patina inside almost like dried algae.
It was an antique Sessions mantel clock, in terrible condition, but all the parts were there, even the key. I said I'd risk $10 on it, figuring I would learn something, if nothing else. I like to tinker with old clocks, and sometimes I get lucky, but I almost always learn something. If I keep it up, I'll be a mediocre clock smith by the time I'm 150.
I went to work on the case first. Nothing lined up quite right, and the mitered joints were impossible to clamp, so I opted for a modified super glue I hadn't tried yet. The label said it would set in 20 seconds if I held it tight, and so it did, and after a little fooling around the case was stable. I cleaned up the finish with my favorite restorer, and cleaned the brass and glass of the face. Time to see if I had a clock.
I had already taken the works out, so I got out my clock oil and hit all the bearings, wound it up and gave it a whirl. It wouldn't run for more than a minute. So I took it out to my shed and dunked it in a bucket of kerosene, let it sit there a few hours, then pulled it out and let it dry.
Inside again, I oiled all the bearings again and gave the pendulum a push. It ran for a few minutes and stopped. I did this several times. I ran the hands around with my fingers, pausing at each hour and half-hour, to make sure the chimes worked right. They did. It still wouldn't run.
So I set it up on my workbench, with its back facing the rest of the room, which includes my desk, gave the pendulum a push and walked away, leaving the back off so I could see the pendulum. It ran! And ran and ran and ran. It ran like that for several days, keeping very good time, chiming at all the right places. I was delighted.
It was fixed, I thought. So I turned it around in the same spot to face my desk, so I could actually see the face and see what time it was. It stopped. I restarted it. It stopped. We did this dance at least a dozen times. No luck. So I turned it around again, because it was easier to see whether it was running if I could see the pendulum. With its back toward me, it ran again. For days.
Then I decided to try it in another room. I took it to the living room, where there was space on the little washstand by the front door. It stopped. We did the restart-stop-restart dance for a few hours, whenever I felt like walking in there. It would not run.
Hmmm, maybe it would rather be facing the wall. So I turned it facing the wall – in the same spot – and gave it a push. It ran. It ran and chimed again for days and days. Now and then, I would turn it around and try to make it run facing the room like a normal clock. Nope. It would only run facing the wall. So facing the wall it ran, and I let it run for a few more days.
Bear in mind that during all this I was using an inclinometer – a very sensitive level – to check the level of the clock, both side to side and front to back. In each case, everything was perfectly level, both on the workbench and on the washstand. Turning the clock around changed nothing, level-wise.
I had been reporting all this activity to my wife, keeping her entertained. But really, I wanted her to be as puzzled as I was. She was.
Eventually, I found myself forced to consider the clock as having a personality, a moody, contrary, shy, personality. And it occurred to me to wonder if maybe she (I had begun to think of it as “she”) wanted to be in a proper place, a place of honor, rather than utility.
I scanned the living room and dining room and settled on a spot I thought might work: atop a low antique record cabinet in the end of the dining room. There was nice art on the wall, and nothing that couldn't be relocated except for an antique figural lamp showing a barefoot art nouveau lady dancing under a vine, from which hangs the light. It seemed an appropriate companion to my shy lady clock.
So I cleared all the other stuff off the top of the cabinet, carried the temperamental clock in from the living room, set it in place with the lady lamp beside her, nudged the pendulum into motion and put the back on.
And she ran!
Facing the room!
She has found her home. I can't sell her now. I dare not move her anywhere else.
My wife said I have a strange relationship with this clock.
“She started it,” I said.
