| Wall Clocks home >
Wall Clocks Info Center > Short Story of Clocks
Short Story of Clocks
Click
here to see our wide selection of Clocks.
There is something about a wall clock that is at once modern and nostalgic. There is a timeless fascination with timekeeping, and the clocks of the ancients are still mimicked today in sundials sold at open-air markets along side the booths of incense peddlers. The sundial can also be found on the floors of Florentine palaces, still keeping the time for the royals. They are large. So large in fact that they take up the length of a thirty-foot gallery.
When I think of large wall clocks, I think of Big Ben, although I am aware that this does not qualify as a wall clock. But is it not England we think of when we think of grand timepieces? “No, no,” my know-it-all brother corrects me. “The Swiss. The Swiss are the genius clock makers.” But then he pauses, doubting himself, “Is it the Swiss or the Germans?” The question is more for himself than for me. He looks up and recovers his confidence. “Well, either the Swiss or the Germans. Definitely not the English.” I think my brother secretly holds a grudge against the English because of their quibble over the Euro conversion. Why this is a big deal to him is a mystery. But that is another story.
A big wall clock, I decide, will make just the gift for my aging father whose sight is diminishing. I have phoned my brother to go along with me on a shopping expedition, but he manages to beg off claiming an earlier than normal day in the morning. I head off to the clock seller by myself. And when I get there, I am glad to be alone. It is ghostly and dark and slightly dusty. The shop has the air of a quiet library except for the ticking. I miss the sound of ticking clocks. Everything has gone digital now. So modern. Remember the time when you could hold your wrist watch to your ear and be mesmerized by the tick-tock, tick-tock… ?
Maybe I am just old.
The clocks are old, and dark and grand. It is a second-hand store. “No,” I say to the clerk who seems encouraged to find a customer in the middle of the afternoon. I know I won’t buy one here. They are not reliable and my father must take his medication on time. Still, they are lovely. How does the storekeeper manage to stay in business, I wonder.
I head to the mall. Surely can find a large wall clock there. But the trip is a waste of time. I phone my brother and whine. He says that I should get with the times and shop on the Internet. “You know,” he says to me, “Online you can probably find a brand new clock that looks like those old fashioned ones.” I brighten and head home.
For the next five hours I am lost in a virtual world made up of every kind of clock imaginable to man. I get sidetracked and read about the time-keeping methods of the Egyptians who even sent time keeping devices to the after world so that their loved ones would not be late. Late for what?
Eventually I find just the one, the large wall clock that will both serve and delight my father. He will hang it on the wall in the den, which incidentally used to be my bedroom and now serves as his television room. Last year it was a pocket watch I gave him. Is there meaning in my clock giving trend? Maybe. But he does need a large wall clock, and with a click of my mouse and the numbers on the plastic in my billfold, the purchase is made. It will arrive by ground courier. It is strange to me that I have spent so much time searching for something that modernity seems to have streamlined. With a quick search and the click of a button, I could have been finished with my shopping in a matter of minutes. But what would be the fun in that? by Selia Franco Pender
|
