My grandparents’ tiny house on Long Island was full of clocks. A grandfather clock stood stoically next to the seltzer cabinet, and a pendulum wall clock kept watch above the crystal candy jar in the living room. My favorite was the cuckoo clock on the staircase. I was mesmerized by the magical way that old bird suddenly sprung from its wooden cage to sing at the top of every hour. Even more than the clocks’ specific personalities, I recall their collective chorus — the chaotic but somehow soothing rhythm of their ticks, tocks, whirs, chimes, sighs and gongs.
Sadly, my grandparents are long gone, and I’m afraid I don’t know what happened to those clocks. They disappeared sometime during the last half-century as we spun our way to this digital, throwaway age. These days it’s easy to believe there’s no longer a need for mechanical clocks or old-fashioned clock repair — but that’s not true.
This is The Old Clock Shop at 1343 Williamson St., seen here in a 1970 James T. Potter photograph. The shop was founded by Philip Stahl, who seems to have gone by either “P. Tock” or “T. Tock” — yes, really. (A 1973 Wisconsin State Journal interview revealed Stahl’s plans to legally change his name to Ticonderoga Tock, which explains both the P, for Phillip, and the T.) The shop is still there, but it’s now called Brumley’s Old Clock Shop. Clocksmith Lee Brumley bought the business more than 40 years ago and does all the repairs on mechanical, windup and weight-driven clocks himself, and only by appointment. “I am especially interested in talking with you if you have been told your clock cannot be repaired,” Brumley writes on his website. Should you call, it’s very likely you’ll need to leave a voicemail “due to a sometimes extremely high volume,” his highly instructive greeting says…