Farmer Gary has been incredibly patient as this blog has explored mostly my ancestors, as we peer back over the decades.

But now, it is (ahem!) time to explore the story of a special clock from long, long ago.

Gary remembers that his mom really wanted to inherit that clock. She’d grown up with it, after all.

Every Sunday evening, her father – Mike Mehling – would smoke his pipe. Then he would gently remove the clock from its shelf in the kitchen. He’d turn the little knob and open the glass door to wind the clock in preparation for another week on the farm.

Then everyone would go to bed. (The other six evenings, the family would kneel together to say the rosary before bedtime.)

“I want that clock!”

Gary remembers the day Grandpa Mehling died. It was May 9, 1964. Gary was eight years old and looking forward to attending a neighbor’s wedding. “We’d be allowed to drink all the soft drinks we wanted,” he remembers.

But before they left home, they received word that Mike had collapsed on the floor of his farmhouse a mile or so away. Gary’s Uncle Jim ran for a doctor, but it was too late.

Gary’s mom, Rita, was heartbroken. As the youngest of nine children (two siblings died very young), Rita was close to her dad, especially after her mom – Rose – passed away six years earlier.

Gary remembers his mom would take her young-uns along each day as she went to visit with her dad, cook for him, and do a bit of cleaning.

“Mostly, we kids would just sit and be quiet.” Gary has clearly dedicated the rest of his life to make up for those periods of silence.

“Sometimes, Sharon and I would go outside and roll down the hill. And watch the hogs in the barn. That was always fun.”

When the family held a private auction to divide up their parents’ belongings the year after Mike passed away, Rita was determined to take home that clock. She told her husband, Andrew: “I want that clock.”

Gary remembers stories that Andrew wasn’t the only one bidding on it, but ultimately they won.

The clock was stored safely as a Do Not Touch item in sisters Sharon and Sheila’s bedroom.

Eventually, a grown-up Sharon asked her mom if she could take the clock to display in her home. Rita said yes.

But the clock never functioned.

… that bugged the heck out of Gary, so when he found a clock repair shop in nearby Jasper, he first tested them with a few of our clocks and then approached them with Sharon’s cherished heirloom.

Gary now counts The Clock Shop‘s owners as his friends. When he stopped by to pick up the repaired timepiece, he stayed for more than an hour.

Chatting with Allen and Marilyn Welsh, whom he guesses are in their 70s, Gary learned that Grandpa Mehling’s clock was made by the Seth Thomas Clock Company of Connecticut; probably in the 1860s. (We wonder if it was a wedding gift; Mike and Rose were married on May 23, 1911. Maybe it was already a family heirloom. Gary’s best guess is that it was passed along to the newlyweds by the bride’s mom, Katherina Schum, when they moved in with her on the home place; her late husband, Henry, was murdered two years earlier.)

Gary was bursting with what he likes to call “useless information” when he got home yesterday. A clockmaker in the 1860s would have earned between six and 10 cents per hour. A “column clock” such as grandpa’s would have cost somewhere between five and seven dollars.

Allen Welsh is quite the craftsman. He detailed to Gary each step he took to restore the vintage timepiece. A retired electrical engineer (Purdue grad), Allen always enjoyed the challenge of repairing antique clocks and decided about 20 years ago to open a shop. He and Marilyn keep busy in their retirement … keeping time.

A few dinged spots on the wooden cabinet needed to be replaced. Allen used rosewood veneer for the repair, and then lacquered the surface.

But the most important work of all was in the guts.

Because Grandpa’s clock had stopped working long ago.

The results are so beautiful, I just had to make a quick video. Turn your sound up to hear the glorious effect!

This clock doesn’t chime – it full-out bongs! Gary doesn’t remember ever hearing it before. It’s the sound of heritage.

Another memory from so long ago: Gary says he’d always know it was time to go home because Grandpa would say “mach es gut” to Rita and she would respond with the same.

Little Gary thought for years “those magic words sounded like ‘must scoot,’ and I knew we were heading home.” But he came to learn it was German for “Make it good.”

I don’t speak German and I never met Grandpa Mehling. But I think he would agree his grandson makes a point to mach es gut each day from sunup to sundown.

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