Postcard from Laura: Does anyone know what time it is?

Istanbul and the Dardanelles, Turkey, Sept. 14: Depending upon where I am in the world, I have the worst time knowing what time it really is. Often I am reminded of the song about time sung by the music group Chicago. I try and whistle this tune, especially when riding on a train run by the Chicago Transit Authority, which is a very fitting concept since this hometown music group was originally known as CTA.

The two old public clocks made famous by the much-loved American artist Norman Rockwell on one of his Saturday Evening Post covers are still kept running as icons in Chicago on the historic Marshall Field’s building, now Macy’s, off of State Street.

Other than those two, there are few older street clocks on Jewelers’ Row, or in the suburbs of Chicago, such as Oak Park, which are still kept running. This sad fact struck me as being very curious until one day I forgot to put on my wristwatch and, while on the elevator of a 54-story high-rise in the Loop, I asked a few people, “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Not one person had on a wristwatch. Not because, like me, they had carelessly forgot to put it on, but because almost no one wears one any more. Several people in the elevator instead fumbled around for their iphones. I concluded that, no one cares — publicly — to know what time it was.

Their time predictions were reconfirmed when we got outside, trusting the old, tried-and-true Field’s clocks instead of the electronic gadgets of today’s hip crowds, to which I do not belong.

I wear a wristwatch, usually everyday, because it is like a piece of art on my arm, but, moreover, I love timepieces because time-keeping devices remind me of a very happy period in my early working career at The Time Museum, formerly in Rockford’s Clock Tower Resort.

For several years, on Mondays, when the museum was closed to the general public, we used the day to check the accuracy of the various long-case clocks and to clean and reset the dozens of other working pieces. John Shallcross, the horologist, or timekeeper, who fittingly was from England and had worked at the Greenwich Observatory, wore a white lab coat like a doctor whose specialty was keeping the clocks healthy. He walked around with a clipboard and sharp pencil in hand, and would carefully record the clocks’ statistics. We all loved our jobs, except for the fact that it was impossible to be late and get away with it.

via Postcard from Laura: Does anyone know what time it is? – Rockford, IL – Rockford Register Star.

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