Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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The Clock

The old clock sits on a shelf ticking away the hours and minutes as it has for 119 years. It survived a trip from Texas to New Mexico in a 1918 Model T Ford touring car. During that move it was damaged by water and sat idle for many years. It returned to Texas in 1934 and was repaired.

Each day I lovingly wind the clock and set the hands. I think of my grandmother, Lillie; her mother, Sara Ann; and my mother, Ruth. Three generations of women before me gently moved those hands, setting the clock.

The clock was purchased on August 14, 1885, in a mercantile store in Van Alstyne, Texas. My great-grandfather, Franklin Bourland, rode a horse fifteen miles from his farm just east of the little town of Weston to buy a clock.

He was a new father again; his youngest daughter, my grandmother Lillie, was only a few hours old. The midwife who assisted at her birth told him the tiny infant probably would not live. The doctor who arrived after her birth gave the new parents very little hope. The tiny baby girl weighted two pounds on a cotton scale. Too small to hold, she was placed on a pillow and her crib was a dresser drawer.

The doctor told the parents she must be fed every hour. Since they did not have a striking clock and feared they would drop off to sleep during the night, Great-Grandpa Bourland set off to purchase a clock.

He bought a steeple-style clock with a very loud strike. When I first inherited this clock, it took me a long time to adjust to sleeping through the night with it striking every hour. It is now a part of my life and though I am no longer aware of the strike, unless I want to know the time, it strikes every hour as it has for all those many years. It keeps perfect time.

My grandmother, in spite of the midwife's and doctor's predictions, lived to celebrate her ninetieth birthday.

After she died, in September 1975, the clock came to my mother. It was cleaned and wound every day. In my mother's home it still ticked away the minutes, striking, reminding that another hour had passed.

The clock sat on a bookcase in the living room and my mother wound it each and every morning. Once the striker broke and though the old clock ticked, it no longer reminded those in the house that an hour had passed. It was again repaired and once more struck the hour.

My mother often told about coming home late when she was a teenager and sneaking into the house. She quietly opened the little glass door on the clock and stopped the pendulum. She recalled her father wondering aloud the next morning why the clock stopped during the night after he wound it before going to bed. Years later she learned she hadn't fooled him at all.

A worried call from my brother one day in April 1987 informed me that our mother was ill. I rushed to her and found her sitting in her living room. While we were preparing to take her to the hospital the clock struck noon, twelve long loud strikes. This was a farewell to my mother. She never returned home and without her to wind it, the clock remained silent for a year.

After Mother died, I brought the old clock home with me. I wind it every day and feel the presence of my mother, Ruth; my grandmother, Lillie; and my great-grandmother, Sara Ann.

The clock is now ticking away the minutes of my life as it did theirs before me. It is like a heartbeat. It allows me to reach back through time and hold the memories of the past. It seems to breath life into the silence when I am home alone. It is comforting and it brings warm memories of those women who listened to the passing of time told by the ticking and striking of this old clock.

A line in Henry Dobson's poem "The Paradox of Time" says, "Alas, Time stays, we go." Perhaps that is true, because the old clock still strikes and those who heard it do so through the years are gone. Only their memories remain.

Shirley A. Clark
Sherman, Texas
Published: November 14, 2005