Dans Papers - May 4, 2007 - Thank You, Mr. Welte

Ten years ago, I went to a yard sale and bought this wonderful mantle clock. Actually, there were two of them, virtually identical.

"Why is one fifty bucks and the other sixty?"

"The one at sixty chimes the hour," the seller said.

"But they both work?"

"Oh yes, perfectly."

I sprang for the sixty dollar one. And I soon realized that this was one of the most wonderful things I had ever come to own. For one thing, on the face it had a lightning bolt and the word ELECTRIC. When they built this, which must have been in the 1940s, having a clock that was electric was a big deal. So they were treating it as a special feature. No winding this baby. Just plug it in. The electricity does the rest.

The second thing was that it had this wonderfully clear carillon of chimes, announcing not only the hour and half hour but even every quarter hour. And it had a flaw. It would play its little tune on the quarter hour, you know the one, and then it would bong. And the bongs would be wrong. It would bong four times at two o'clock, then eleven times at three o'clock, and if it felt like it, it would bong six times at a quarter past four.

I came to really like this. People would hear it and then look puzzled. Or they'd look at their wrist. Was it really...couldn't be. And of course, the clock face itself, with the big hand and little hand telling the correct time, confirmed that it couldn't be.

I thought there was something very philosophic about this. If you looked at it, you got the right time. If you listened to it, you didn't. The clock was off somewhere else. That was fine with me.

But then, as time continued on -- this is not intended as a pun -- and five years past, the clock mechanism began to deteriorate. It would occasionally begin making a grinding noise with all the wheels turning inside sounding like they were suddenly in trouble. And it would fall behind. You could open the back and push this little metal wheel spinning around to speed it up and the grinding would stop and it would return to a normal pace again. But then you'd have to reset the hands of the clock again.

For a long time, this grinding noise would start up just once a week and I'd open the back and give the wheel a push and reset it. But then, it began to get worse. Soon, it was doing it every day. And then every hour. And then, one day, it just began bonging and grinding endlessly and there was nothing I could do but pull its plug to make it stop. At that point, I knew the end was near. It broke my heart to put this clock aside. But I did. I took it to a clock repair shop in Hampton Bays and they told me that they could look at it for $85 and probably fix it for $265, but maybe it would be more. From what they could see by opening the back, they didn't even think it was the original workings back there. "Things get replaced all the time," they said. "So you might not even be able to get the right part. Or even know what the right part is."

Tearfully, I put the clock up on the top of a bookcase. I could look at it from time to time and remember all the laughs we used to have. But I knew it was always two thirty six up there and that would never change. It was not plugged in. I decided to write about my clock for the paper. Sort of an obituary and reminisce. I did that.

And then, about three months ago -- this was now 21 days after I wrote the article -- I got a call from a man who said his name was Morris Welte and he and his wife lived in Southampton.

"I read your story about the mantle clock," he said. "And I have not been able to put it out of my mind. I am a clockmaker and I think I can fix it. Or, at the least, I'd like to try. Could you bring it by?"

I told him I had already visited a clock maker and there was no point in it, but he persisted. I asked what he would charge to look at it. I told him I had only paid sixty dollars for this clock.

"I know all that from when you wrote about it," he said. "I wouldn't charge you at all. I've been reading your paper for years. You have given me considerable enjoyment. I would like to do this for you at no charge." He told me how to get to his house. I should bring the clock.

And so, in February of this year, I came to meet this older couple, Morris and Alice Welte, of Willis Lane in Southampton. They were polite and gracious. I was offered tea and cookies. And Morris gave me his card. TICK TOCK CLOCK REPAIR, it read. He told me that this is what he was doing in his retirement. And he had been retired for 25 years.

"Just leave it with me," he said. "I should know in a few weeks."

In mid-March, I got a progress report from Morris Welte by telephone. He told me the clock had improved, but was still in intensive care.

"I'll get back to you in another week or two," he said. "The prognosis is good." This morning, at his request, I went to his house to pick up my clock.

"All done," he said, patting it on the top of its head. The wood was all shined up. The face had been cleaned. He had it on his dining room table, all plugged in. It was humming along happily.

"I saw you sitting out in the car for a minute or two before you came to the front door," he said. "So you missed it bonging the hour. It was just a few minutes ago."

The clock said three minutes after eleven. That must have been something. We both stood there staring at it silently, contemplating the fact that it would be twelve more minutes before it would fire up again. Ten seconds passed.

"Would you like to see my little repair shop?" Morris asked.

"Sure," I said. I thought to say, "The Five Minute Tour," but I bit my lip.

He led me through the kitchen to a flight of stairs that went down to his basement. There was a workbench there, right near the furnace. All the different tools were sitting on it, all oiled and lined up in a row. There was a grandfather clock against one wall. The place was very neat.

"That one is going through testing," he said. "I promised I'd get it fixed in a week. Here on the bench you can see where I have built this metal rack. I take all the parts out of a clock and attach them in appropriate relationships one to another on this rack and then I can walk around and work on them, front and back, unobstructed."

I was curious to know how he had come to repairing clocks. Had that been his career?

"Oh, no," he said. "I worked being a radio man aboard ships at sea, I grew up in upstate New York, where I learned Morse code in school. When I graduated, I worked for a private company that trained radio men and assigned them to ships.

"In the thirties, I traveled all over the world. Egypt. Japan. France. Athens. When you are a radio man like that, you can get assigned to a freighter or a government ship or a passenger liner. I was fortunate to always get passenger liners. I had a wonderful time."

I imagined him as the radio operator on the Titanic. But that would have been a generation earlier. And anyway, the radio guy on the Titanic didn't make it. Yet here was Morris Welte. So it wasn't him.

"During the Second World War," he said, "I became a radio operator aboard airplanes. I worked for Pan Am. They were making bombers during the war. And they'd fly them down to Miami, six at a time, brand new, and I'd be aboard one of these planes as we delivered it to England or the South Pacific or somewhere. We delivered B-25s and B-26s."

Welte's career took a strange turn after the war.

"I got a job offer from Mackie Radio on Long Island," he said. "They had a contract to monitor all the ships at sea from a tower they had built in the woods of Southampton. So I moved here."

Welte told me a fascinating story about how Mackie got started in the business.

"Around 1910, a German firm built a Radio tower and office in Sayville, Long Island, to monitor all ships at sea. You didn't need a government licence in those days. You just built one and the government would, if they needed you on the grid, hire you to keep track of everything. So the Germans ran it and linked it to Berlin without telling anybody. By 1914, when Germany attacked France to start World War I, they could tell immediately where all the American ships were because of what they had built in Sayville. Finally, around 1918, just about when the war was winding down, the Americans realized this and shut it down. After the war, a man named Clarence Mackie bought it from the government, disassembled it, brought it out and reassembled it on a tall hill here in Southampton. He's who hired me."

Welte worked for Mackie for thirty years. He not only worked the Morse Code, but also learned how to fix the equipment when it was in disrepair. He retired from the firm in 1975 and, three years later, Mackie went out of business. Morse Code wasn't needed anymore.

"Today, it's a hill with lots of expensive mansions on it. Just north of County Road 39 off Major's Path. No trace of Mackie."

In his retirement, Welte learned clock repair at BOCES in Riverhead and, at the little house he and his wife bought, opened Tick Tock Clock Repair. He's been fixing clocks ever since.

"I think it's time to go upstairs and listen to eleven fifteen," he said.

Welte has completely fixed my clock. It plays its tune once on the quarter hour, twice on the half hour, three times on the three quarter hour and then four times at the top of the hour, followed by the exact number of bongs to correspond with the hour.

I said my good byes and Welte ushered me to the front door, carrying my baby. "Be careful of the step," he said as he accompanied me out to my car.

It was nightfall now. Ten o'clock. And the clock has chimed once again on my mantlepiece. You know what? I kind of miss it being ten o'clock with the clock bonging whatever the hell time it wanted.

But then again, I don't miss that. It's nice that I didn't throw it out when it died, but had the chance, thanks to Morris, to have this beautiful thing brought back to the robust fullness of its life.

"It was the chime wheel that was gunked up," he had told me. "The rest was fine. It's just as it was, brand new. These are its original workings. The motor was fine. But I think I'd keep the little wooden door in the back just a little ajar all the time. It does generate some heat when it spins around. And it's always spinning around. Leaving the door open a little will allow the air to circulate through and help keep it healthy."