Time keeps ticking

[fbhjr]

As the college where my wife works had graduation last week, this week she took off.
So, we’re hoping to do some museums in the area together this week.
For our first trip this week, we picked the Willard Clock Museum in Grafton, MA. It’s only about 5 miles from where we live, but we’ve never been there before.

When we got in the car, we found it was another day where the pollen was so bad we had to use the windshield wipers to get it off.


The museum is very close to the place in Grafton my wife lived when we first met.


(She lived up the road on the left from where this picture was taken.)

The museum is in the house built in the early 1700’s when Grafton was “Indian country”.


They have 100 acres of land there and it is very well kept up.
There were only 2 other cars in the parking lot, and both of them were owned by people who work there.


It is not a big museum. It still has some very cool stuff in it.
But, it was strange to me when we went up to the entrance and there was a sign saying “ring bell”.
So, we rang the bell. A woman who had been vacuuming the carpet came to the door, unlocked it and let us in.
It turns out she is the director of the museum and gave us a tour of it.
(Sadly, no pictures allowed inside. Sad.)

The house is where 4 brothers who went on to become leading clock makers in the 1800’s grew up. They have their workshop there, with the gear cutters and examples of their work, as well as many finished clocks and family items from the 1700 and 1800’s. (One of their clocks is still in the US capitol building in DC, commissioned by Thomas Jefferson personally. The letter is still there in the house along with one from him for the university of Virginia as well.)

It is not clear to me who they get visiting the place. And, we appeared to be the only ones there today.
But, the director seemed very surprised that I kept looking at the inner workings of the clocks on display and spent a lot of time looking at the tools and prototypes in the workshop.
(From what she talked about I gather most of the other folks are interested in the decorative aspects of them.)
But, these are great clocks. They had their patent there on displace for the clock that could go 30 hours without winding, which was a major innovation at the time.

So, it was a very nice tour of the museum. We were there at noon when every working clock in the place went off.
Actually they went off from about 5 of until about 10 past. The director apologized for them not all being in sync, but we pointed out this way you got to hear each on individually instead of just one big noise.

So, if you’re in the area, I strongly recommend stopping by to see it.

Then, we came back to Shrewsbury, land of bad drivers who can’t spell.

Comments

[64tbird.livejournal.com]

You should send that sign to failblog.com.

I should get more coffee as I read your header as "Time keeps on tickling."

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I tired to go to that site, but it crashed my laptop...
So, maybe I'm not meant to mock the car care people who did the safety inspection on my car last year...

I actually like tickling time better then what I wrote.

[64tbird.livejournal.com]

Duh...

That's 'cos it's failblog.ORG

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

Darn! Since I had my "furlough" on Tuesday, I could have met up with you guys as the museum is like 5 minutes from my place. Ah well.

It is a neat little museum.