A Cuckoo Story With A Better Than Average Ending

As you are well aware, I quit writing these newspaper articles a year ago. At about the same time, I stopped repairing old clocks. Loss of memory, out of ideas, and Leon (my best story source) passing away got me out of the former, and bad eyesight forced me to give up the latter.

I have slipped into a couple of papers an odd story here and there when nobody was looking. And I will still fix a clock on occasion, if the person who owns it is one of my former students, or they go to our church, or if anybody just brings in a good-looking genuine antique that is not working.

I don’t get paid any longer for the newspaper articles because I have officially retired. And, I still vividly remember walking into Mr. Wesley Ramsey’s office umpteen years ago to ask for my very first raise. He wiped a bit of ink stain off his hand, gave me that beautiful wry grin that would have disarmed Adolf Hitler and said, “Kes, I’m already paying you more than you are worth.”

I have understood the value of my little scribblings since 1984.

I never charge anyone for the clockwork because it’s just a hobby I have enjoyed over the years. And, remember, I do it for my friends. Most of them aren’t going to pay me anyway. And a lot of the clocks are pretty simple to work on.

An old Coca-Cola advertiser from the early 1920’s is a good example. It has a mainspring, three gears, and an escape wheel and that’s about it. If the clock strikes, you’ve got an extra “chain” of gears. It can double your problems when working on one. I don’t fix cuckoo clocks at all because they have small movements, bellows that are very flimsy, it’s hard to get the bird at the top to spurt out on cue, and many of them have music boxes attached which presents another whole set of problems.

I wrote a newspaper article last week because I had a lucid moment.

And I agreed to work on a friend’s Black Forest German Cuckoo Clock with all the bells and whistles because I had an un-lucid one!

I’m telling you, when I got that thing completely apart, I had gears, springs, wires, screws, sprockets, chains, goat skinned bellows, and ax-wielding music box wood choppers strung out from here to Topeka, Kansas! I cleaned, oiled, scraped, rewired, and moaned for three days and nights.

Of course, it didn’t run, strike, cuckoo, chirp, or play music when I got it back together.

I took it all apart again. And again. And was trying to find a leg of the miniature dancing Fraulein when I thought of Cliff Sanborn.

Cliff was first class in every respect. I met him the year I moved to Port St. Joe. The first thing he said to me was, “Coach, do folks work back in Tennessee where you come from?” He judged people exactly the same way my Father did.

I mentioned to him once that I needed a well so I could water my yard. He immediately volunteered to “jet down” a shallow well for me. He figured it would take 20 minutes.

The next day he came over with pipes and hoses and jumped right to it. Cliff worked at the paper mill. He didn’t make a living digging wells. At about ten feet, we hit a World War II underground concrete bunker. Let me tell you, it’s pretty hard to spray the most ardent stream of water through five feet of concrete!

It didn’t deter Cliff. He worked harder. At 16 feet, we hit a sublayer of granite. This was not going well. I quit and went to my day job, “Cliff, don’t worry about it. I can get a well drilling outfit.”

He wouldn’t hear of it. I’d wake up at daylight and he’d be out in my backyard, pushing and pulling on a “new” rigging he was trying, sweat just pouring off of him.

“Cliff, this ain’t worth it. I’ll hire someone.”

By the middle of the second week, I realized I didn’t figure into the equation anymore. It had become personal with Cliff and the ground. He was going to get water out of it or die trying. Talk about true grit!

He didn’t quit, take a break, work his garden, kiss Miss Martha, fuss at Robbie and Sandy, or worry about the price of eggs in China till he had water gushing out of that hole….

Good golly, I couldn’t let one little cuckoo clock whip me. I got up early and worked late into the night. I forgot all else until I had that thing humming like a song.

Don’t you just love a happy ending. My friend got a working clock back. And I got to feel the spirit of Cliff Sanborn looking over my shoulder one more time, still urging me on in this life….

Respectfully,
Kes