The Clock

Setting my digital clocks after a power outage; I remembered Dad resetting the round kitchen clock.  I do not remember another clock in the kitchen while growing up.  Dad would look at the clock and tell us what time the power had gone out.  Then he would take it off the wall, reset the time, and spin the second hand to start it again.  It is yellow with a silver band around the face.  I'm sure it is the clock I looked at when I  learned to tell time.

I was in my fifties when I noticed another clock on the wall of Mom's kitchen.  I asked what happened to the round clock--did it stop working?  Oh, no she said it's at Bob's house.  When Bob died, I asked his children if I could have the clock.  I stopped at the house where they were supporting each other in their grief. They looked so young and orphaned, although the youngest was nineteen.  We wrapped the clock in newspaper and put it in the back of my truck.  The clock was working when my nephew took it off the wall.  Weeks later, back in California, I hung the clock on the wall of my bedroom and plugged it in.  It would not work.

The history of the clock, as I remember it--Mom told me they had bought it from the Nelsons at the sale they had when they left farming.  I was an infant.

The farms we lived on were known by the owner's last name.  At the Peterson place it hung beside the back door.  When we lived on the Way place it's place was above the refrigerator next to the stairs.

Ah, Yes, the refrigerator, a Corssley Shelvadoor with a name plate that slipped out of a slot on the door.  I can see Dad standing with his arm up o the refrigerator door moving the plate back and forth as he talked.  He often stopped to line up the name plate exactly in it's silver slot.

Back to the clock.  There wasn't room above the refrigerator at the Yost place, so it hung on the wall across from the door to the back porch.  The brown radio, set to stations WOW or KFAB, sat on top of the refrigerator.

When we moved to Grandma and Grandpa's farm, I think it was above the stove or maybe on the wall where I remember the big crank telephone hung when Virgil and Garnet lived in that house.  When mom moved to the little house on Pearl Street the clock's  home was to the right of the stove.  The clock came to my home before Mom moved to the La Vista Apartments.

I still have the clock.  It will not run.  I took it to a repair shop where they told me it couldn't be fixed.  I coiled the cord in the back and taped it so I could hang the clock.  It is above the door in my office set for six o'clock.