Photo Caption: Mark Meadows, at the work bench in
his clock repair business, Good Time Clock Shop, outside Cassville.
(H.I. Regional News photo by Ron Burnett)
CASSVILLE--Every clock tells a story to Mark Meadows. Either it's a story he knows from his reading about antique clocks and their histories, or it's what he's learned from working on the timepiece's inner mechanism.
"Almost every clock I get has been damaged by someone," he says, peering through his jeweler's loupe at the interlocked cogs on his workbench. "This one looks like it was worked on by two guys that didn't know what they were doing, and by two that did."
He points to the spot on one clock's interior where the manufacturer's name had been ground off the metal, removed in 1941 in occupied France when its owner did not want it known that he had something German.
Meadows walks visitors through his cluttered workshop in the small building behind his house, pausing beside one clock after another with a story.
"This is a ship's bell clock, it strikes two times," he says. "If you see these at antique clock shows, lots of people want them--retired naval people, especially. Some people want one of every clock they find, but I don't collect clocks.
HTMLer's note: The reporter erred in his transcription of Mark's explanation of how a ship's bell clock strikes. It doesn't just strike "two times" but sounds one bell for each half hour in a four hour period, or "watch", then starts over again.
"This is a Comtoise, from the 1880s," he says, pointing to a highly decorative clock mounted on the wall, from France. "The earliest ones had small, folding pendulums. Two minutes after they strike the hour, they strike again--just in case you missed it the first time!"
Meadows discovered his affinity for timepieces when, as a boy, he took an alarm clock apart and found he could put it back together again ("After that there was no stopping me"). Still, he earned a degree in library science and worked as a librarian for various university libraries before he and wife Judy decided to relocate to the Ozarks in 1982. Since that time they have owned, and sold, a mail order business selling reproduction clock glass (the glass panel beneath the face, silk screened with scenes like clipper ships under full sail) before turning to clock repair full time.
It's a job that keeps Meadows busy. He estimates that his waiting list of jobs is several months long; the dozen or more mantle clocks, lined up in a back room, attest to this.
"My own clocks never get worked on," he jokes, displaying the housing of a Seth Thomas Lodge model (looking like a tiny house, complete with tiled roof and chimney) that is missing its mechanism. "My wife has been wanting this one fixed for quite a while."
Good Time Clock Shop is located at Route 2, Box 2368, Cassville.
This article marked up for hypertext by Chris Meadows (robotech@jurai.net)