Thanks to Dad’s antique clock collection, we hear the time
Kidsday reporter Vince Ryan with part of his family's clock collection. Credit: Ryan family
One, two, three . . . 13 and 14. That’s how many clocks my dad has sitting around the house. All day long I hear bangs, cracks and hums, and they loop around and around and around. While some are like full melodies, some are as simplistic as one hammer and one coil to strike on. My dad has 14 clocks, and they all chime at various times.
They gong on and off, and if I sleep downstairs and I don’t have the TV on, all I hear is just bong and bong, one every 15 minutes, one every 30 minutes, and so on. My dad has at least 10 different types of clocks, including Kent, Wales, Oregon, Hecla and more.
My favorite is the Oregon, which is from 1885; it’s just a big, wooden rectangle clock, with a pedestal at the bottom and four wooden curves at the bottom on the pedestal. At the peak of the clock, there is an oval-type shape with a circle halfway on it, and there are two pegs sticking out of the side of the oval part. On the side of the top oval there is an almost fence-like structure that surrounds the sides, but not the back.
One that is similar to the Oregon is the Hecla, which is from 1884, and it’s like a beefed-up, fancier version of the Oregon. Some of the clocks are from the 1800s, some are from the late 1900s, and all are well preserved.
Debbie Cain and Derrick Horodyski’s sixth-grade class, Chatterton Elementary School, Merrick
