Sunday, June 1, 2008 12:28 AM CDT
As clockmakers fade away, younger Mattoon horologist takes up their mantle
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
Go to our multimedia page to check out some more photos and audio from Mike and Doc's Tick Tock Clock Shop.
As their clock repair business really gets in gear, Mike Davis and Henry “Doc” Bell increasingly have their hands full.
But let’s face it: When you’re among a dying breed of “horologists,” the demand for your services is not going to leave you with much spare time.
“I sure as heck don’t have a lot of competition,” said Davis.
Of course, Mike & Doc’s Tick Tock Clock Shop — which Davis and Bell operate out of Bell’s Mattoon house — was pretty much an inevitability.
Bell, 80, has been obsessed with timepieces since his childhood. Davis, meanwhile, may be a relative newcomer to horology (the art of clock-making and repair), but his longtime love of auto mechanics and electronics translated immediately into a passion for clocks and watches.
Not that either of them can adequately describe the intangible appeal of timepieces. Nor do they feel the need to try.
“There is an attraction to clocks that you can’t explain,” said Davis.
“I just love them,” Bell said. “Something drove me to fall in love with them.”
This captivation took hold of him even before adolescence. At the age of 9, Bell plunked down $7 — a small fortune during the Great Depression — for his first mantle clock. “I had to mow a lot of yards and pass a lot of newspapers to pay for it,” he said.
This same timepiece was also the subject of some early experiments in clock repair and adjustment. When he was a student at Mattoon High School, Bell removed the clock’s striker to prevent it from chiming in hopes that his mother would not realize his arrival at home after curfew.
Bell spent 35 years as a lineman and repair foreman for Consolidated Communications, tinkering with clocks on the side. By the time Davis came to work as a caregiver at Bell’s house about two years ago, Bell had amassed more than 200 clocks.
Davis, meanwhile, wasn’t introduced to clock-making until he met Bell, but he grew up around other gizmos and gadgets. His father, the late Bill Davis, worked at Ace Picture Tube Plant (now Brian’s Place), remanufacturing cathode ray tubes for televisions.
“I spent a lot of my childhood taking TVs apart and testing glass (vacuum) tubes,” Mike Davis said.
Additionally, “I started working on cars years before I could drive them,” he said.
Soon after he went to work at Bell’s residence, he began showing an interest in clocks, so Bell encouraged Davis to consider horology school.
“They said at my age, I ought to go to school and learn the trade, because there’s no one else,” said Davis.
He added, “There’s a huge need” for trained horologists, most of whom are now retired or deceased. The number of certified watchmakers is less than 6,000 in the United States, and there are even fewer clockmakers, according to Davis.
From April to October 2007, he attended the Gem City College School of Horology in Quincy. Not only did he study the mechanics of timepieces, but he learned how to make everything from gears to springs — from scratch.
He currently is working toward certification as a master clockmaker, and he is contemplating making and selling timepieces someday.
“They’re really not all that complicated, once you understand them,” Davis said.
But the flow of such knowledge to younger generations has slowed to a trickle. Davis was only one of two students in his graduating class at horology school.
And as horologists diminish, so too does the availability of mechanical timepieces, said Bell. “You can’t hardly find them anymore,” he said.
Still, it’s difficult to imagine a scarcity of antique clocks after walking into Bell’s house, which functions as a veritable museum as well as a burgeoning repair shop. Few surfaces are not covered with some sort of timepiece, most of which do more than just tell the correct time.
“Every clock is a story,” Davis said. “It’s neat to hear it.”
Near a corner stands a large “English tall clock,” similar to a grandfather clock, that probably was transported from England to the United States in the late 1700s. When Bell purchased it in the 1960s, the clock had found its way to Charleston, but was in a state of disrepair.
Bell has since restored it to its former glory.
A clock that once belonged to the Dole family, who were among the founders of Mattoon, now hangs on Bell’s wall. Likely assembled in the 1880s, it too had ceased to operate by the time it came into Bell’s possession about two years ago, when Davis was just emerging as a clock enthusiast.
“We figured it was a piece of Mattoon’s history, so we put it back together,” Davis said.
Another of Bell’s wall clocks remained for years in the old Hampton’s Jewelers store on Broadway Avenue. Bell remembers seeing it there as a child, and he purchased it once he had the means to do so.
Davis said his favorite of Bell’s clocks is a miniature version of an 1890 German-made wall clock used by a salesman for Jumgham’s Clock Company.
All but a few of Bell’s timepieces are mechanical, powered either by springs or weights.
But in this digital age, with personal computers connected to atomic clocks via the Internet and cell phones often taking the place of wristwatches, are mechanical clocks even relevant?
Davis answers that question with a chuckle, and cites how business at Mike & Doc’s Tick Tock Clock Shop (Bell’s daughter, Diane Cole, came up with the name) has blossomed beyond their wildest expectations. “People miss the sound of their clocks,” Davis said. “There’s no comparing a digital clock to a mechanical clock.”
Of course, working in this sort of environment has its disadvantages. For one, there’s no way Davis can sneak in late for work.
“We are punctual,” he said.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com.
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lifelesson wrote on Jun 1, 2008 7:53 AM: