As Time Goes By

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was The Time Machine with Rod Taylor. The Morlocks were goofy, but I enjoyed the conundrum of traveling through time, you know, like in Star Trek episode #28, City on the Edge of Forever, when Kirk has to let Joan Collins get run over by a truck so that the nazis don't win the Second World War which would cause the Enterprise to disappear from overhead stranding the crew in front of the Giant Time Donut? (No, I do not live in my mother's basement.)

Rod Taylor's time machine was more charming than the Giant Donut, but that wasn't what I liked best about the movie. What I liked was the wall of clocks over the mantel in Rod's living room. I loved the noise of their collective ticking. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to leave those wonderful ticking clocks and go anywhere else, particularly not back to those goofy Morlocks and our dim-bulb descendants, the Eloi.

So when I got old enough to spend my money foolishly, I bought a bunch of antique clocks. I have a Kienzle from Germany circa 1880; I have a cuckoo clock brought back from the Black Forest as a souvenir for my grandmother; I have a Western Union Naval Observatory clock--the first electric clock to wind itself; and I have an Atmos clock that runs on the temperature gradient. (I've had three or four more that I got rid of. Turns out old clocks are temperamental and expensive.) I could never afford to buy nor to take care of a wall full of clocks like Rod Taylor's, but I keep a few. And I keep them running because they tick so beautifully.

Books about clocks and time:

Decoding the Heavens
Clock Repairing as a Hobby
The Standard Antique Clock Value Guide
Timepieces
History of the Hour

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