I seem to have a problem. Oh, you’d noticed! A few actually.
One of them at the moment, however, is the number of clocks I have in my house. I think they may even be breeding.
It’s been a slow motion invasion, but I think the time has come to own this infestation and do something about it.
Not that they’ll all be going. Nay, I have a thing about a clock being visible in every room I walk into in this house. The electronic digital variety is fine, but I prefer the old style analog clock with hands, ticking away on the wall. So much more character.
I also prefer them because if there’s one of those brief power outages, I don’t have to go around and reset all of them to stop the mad flashing digital clocks do. Annoying. With the old style you may have to move the second hand forward a minute or two, or in a longer outage, a quick turn of the hands and all is well.
Digital clocks? You have to push 50 buttons or so, and take special note to have them in either a.m. or p.m. Such a pain.
Besides, digital clocks don’t keep you company. In the room where I write this column I have a pendulum clock on the wall, and with each tick, the pendulum strikes the inside of the cabinet marking pretty much every second that passes. Does that 24 hours a day.
Some people ask if the noise from the clock drives me crazy, but the truth is it’s like an old friend.
It’s also a bit like living by an airport, as I did as a young lad. When we first moved to Winnipeg in 1957, our home was very close to a runway flight path, and at first, every plane seemed as though it was actually in our house. Didn’t take long before we didn’t even notice them. Same with my friendly clock.
I also have a couple of other special clocks that keep me company with the sounds they make, and I think one perhaps terrorizes the other.
One is a cat clock, that every hour on the hour meows loudly, and the other is a bird clock, with 12 different birds, including an owl and a goose, that also sing out every hour, but the bird clock is a few seconds behind the cat clock, and I swear those birds always sound a bit nervous. I guess it’s possible it just may be my imagination.
Something that isn’t my imagination, is that all the while I’ve been writing this clock column, I’ve had Burton Cummings singing The Guess Who’s Clock on the Wall song in my head, and if you remember that ’60s tune, you’re old. I remember that song coming out and thinking, "These guys are SO good, man that Cummings can sing." Google it, so it can play endlessly in your head too.
Clocks aside for a moment, another thing I have too many of here are the old ’50s and ’60s radio/record player combos, that I was going to show you a pic of, sporting my first ever 78, Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel single. Mind you, since the record is complete but broken, and I can’t seem to find a record player from back then that actually works, it’s really just all about the memories… speaking of which, mine being what it is, I can’t even remember where I tucked Elvis away. I do know he hasn’t left the building. He’ll turn up.
So, between now and garage sale time I’ve got some clocks to round up, sort through, decide what to keep, sell, and give away.
So many clocks, so little time!
Got a great column idea?
I’d love to hear it.
lmustard1948@gmail.com
