Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Get Back to Cuckoo!

No. This is not a description of me (I hope). As part of my rebirth, I pulled my cuckoo clock out of the box, put it up on the wall, and now it is ticking (and tocking) away.

My cuckoo clock back to life.

It has been many years since my cuckoo clock has been a presence in my life. But now it is back. For a long time it was tucked in a box stuck away. Off hand, I don't remember when it was last on the wall or actually in use. There were a couple of reasons for this.

First, during my "marriage" to Lynn, she found the sounds annoying and the clock became a focal point of control. I would wind it up and go to work only to return home to find it silent and still. Then, the music part malfunctioned and it would continually play its waltz until the weight had played itself out. Lynn's mom, Judy, knew a clock repairman whom she thought would fix it. After a year of being in the shop, I asked for the clock back. When it left, it was in the original box with the original instructions. When it returned, it was in a generic box that wasn't the right size and the instructions were missing.*  The music played correctly for a while but then it went back to its old ways and I was done fighting.

So now that Lynn is gone once again and I am wondering who I am and supposed to be, the cuckoo (clock) is back. When I first put it up, it ticked for a few moments but then stopped. But, unlike years ago, we now have the internet to instruct us on just about anything, including troubleshooting your cuckoo clock. And so, after checking a few sites, I nudged the clock so it was a degree or so more level, and tick-tocking continued without interruption.

Close-up view of my cuckoo clock.

My affinity for a cuckoo clock dates back to my childhood. We always had one (and it is still there in my Mom's house). One of my chores as a child was to make sure the clock was wound. The clock was a gift to my parents from my mother's brother when he returned from military duty in (West) Germany in the late 1950s. Uncle Jim passed away earlier this year and my Aunt Denise told me that his military duty in Germany prevented him from attending my parents' wedding; so the cuckoo clock was their wedding present from him.

Years later, when I was beginning my career and starting my own residence, I naturally wanted to outfit my apartment with a cuckoo clock. I bought mine from a clock store in Berea. As usual, I had no idea what I was getting. I only knew it was a cuckoo clock made in Germany and it played music on the hour as well as cuckooing on the hour (the number of the hour) and half hour (one cuckoo).

It is a tremendous satisfaction and comfort to come into the living room and hear the clock steadily ticking away. There is something reassuring about that for me. It's like the heartbeat of life.

There are still some adjustments needed:
  1. The clock seems to run a few minutes fast. By the end of the day it is about 3-minutes ahead. I recall that in the past I struggled trying to adjust the speed. This is done by adjusting the leaf on the pendulum.  Right now, I can live with it by letting it go idle for a couple minutes at the start of the day in order to synchronize the time.
  2. The number of cuckoos is one behind the actual time. For example at 1 o-clock, it cuckoos 12 times. This requires adjusting the hands of the clock. I remember doing this in the past but right now I am content to live with this minor idiosyncrasy.
  3. The music does not play at the top of the hour. As I understand it, there is a special gear that is no longer available that drives the music. In any case, something is in the works that causes the music to play sporadically without warning or apparent cause. Sometimes it goes through several cycles and then mysteriously stops.
For right now, I am very happy to have the cuckoo back and calmly tick-tocking away.

* Typing up this post, prompted me to hunt through my files in hopes of finding the invoice from when I bought the clock. I didn't find that but instead discovered the instructions that I had assumed were lost when the clock went to the repair shop. These instructions indicate that the clock was manufactured in the Black Forest of Germany by Emil Schmeckenbecher.
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