There was a time when nearly all the clocks we were familiar with went "Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock" as they counted off the minutes and the hours. I was realizing the other day that although I have at least one of the old-style ticking clocks stashed somewhere in my stored belongings, we have no clocks that go "tick tock" in the house now. Everything is electric and soundless, or battery-powered and nearly silent. Only two of our clocks in the house have dials of the old style, with an hour hand and a minute hand going round and round. I keep a small battery-powered dial-type clock on my desk. It even has a second hand, and if I put my ear to it I can hear the mechanism going "Cluck, Cluck, Cluck" as it advances the second hand. It is something of a reminder of the old clocks, but it is not the same. In those old clocks, the central mechanism was the timing apparatus that regulated the gears and kept the time and went Tick and Tock as it did so.
With the old clocks, the Tick-Tocking was the main way you knew the clock was running (other than checking occasionally to see if the time it showed was keeping up with the real time). With the tall shelf clocks, or the great floor-standing grandfather clocks, often the tick-tocking was strong enough to be heard all through the house in the quiet of the night. Probably some people today, unaccustomed to the ticking of the clock, would find it drives them crazy, at least until they get used to it. But it was really a kind of reassuring sound as the clock ticked off the quiet night hours, Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock. You got so you might not even hear the clock, until it stopped. Then, if it stopped, you would ask, Did someone forget to wind the clock? Did we forget to raise the clock's weights? So you would get up in the middle of the night, light the lamp or a candle, and go wind the clock, or raise the weights which powered the clock. Once you had it tick-tocking again, all was well, and you would go back to bed and back to sleep to the comfortable sound of the clock in the night, Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.
We even had songs about tick-tocking clocks. I can't recall lately hearing any new songs about our clocks, or our wrist watches, or the time functions on our cell phones or computers. I remember a little children's ditty that went, "Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck 'One,' the mouse ran down, Jiggety, Jiggety Jog!" That reminds me that many of the old clocks, the shelf clocks and the grandfather clocks, were striker clocks. They struck the time on the hour, one bong for each hour. Many striker clocks also bonged a short bong on the half-hour. It was harder to hear the time for the hours 10 or 11 or 12 because you might lose count of how many bongs the striker had bonged. On those old clocks with strikers, you had to wind the striker as well as the clock's mainspring. The large clocks had separate weights, one to power the striker and one to power the clock itself.
I used to love an old song about a grandfather clock. I can't remember the words really well, but it went something like, "Grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf, so it stood ninety years on the floor. Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock, Ninety years without slumbering, Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock -- But it stopped -- short -- never to go again -- when the old man died." It seems nobody writes songs these days about great old clocks counting the hours and days and years of great old men's lives.
Many of the old shelf clocks and grandfather clocks had a swinging weight called a pendulum. The swing of the pendulum was the way those old clocks measured out the time, and the Tick and the Tock were the sounds of the mechanism as it regulated step-by-step, Tick by Tock, the advance of the gears which turned the clock's hands which displayed the time. The weight and length of the pendulum were the things that regulated the pace of the clock. A heavier or longer pendulum swung slower, so removing weight or shortening the pendulum produced a quicker swing. If your clock was losing time, or gaining time, you could regulate it by working with the swing of the pendulum.
The old clocks were really art forms, fine pieces of furniture decorated and styled in grand fashion. They were sculptures in motion, counting out the time and announcing its passing with sound and movement, a stately dance depicting how in life we are always stepping out of the old and into the new! The Tick-Tocking of an old clock was not a monotonous thing to be avoided. Somehow it became a reassuring accompaniment to the march of time, sounding out the beat of life. It was far more melodious than the tinny screeching of today's phone ringtones. Maybe I can find a recording of the old song, "Grandfather's Clock," for my 76th birthday! Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock! I shouldn't wait 'til I'm 90!
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, has a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society and can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or by phone at 621-1621.
Editorial on 05/27/2015