Listening to the chimes on Christmas Eve.

by Carl
(AZ)

Yesterday, I visited my Uncle Simons house. When I was younger my cousins and I would go there with our families for Christmas Eve.

The only recollection I have from my childhood at his house was his big grandfather clock sitting in the corner of the family room.

It was a Frodsham II manufactured by Museum clocks. It was German made and handcrafted with solid wood. It had a silver pendulum and chimes with an off white dial.

My cousins and I would sit around till midnight on Christmas Eve just to hear the chimes go off. On my visit I noticed that his grandfather clock was in the same place it was when I was a young boy.

I sat in amusement staring at the pendulum and old clock face ticking away. It made the same sound that it made when we were kids. It still rang every 1 hour just as I remembered.

He sat down across the room and we brought up all the old stories of the Christmas Eve parties and the fact that the family doesn’t see each other as much as we used to.

The clock still looked like it was in good shape, just had a little dust on it. The reason for my visit was to help him move furniture.

He was cleaning old things and said if I helped he would give me a special gift. We were nearly finished moving furniture and cleaning out the attic when he told we had one more project to finish before we sat down to dinner.

He said that we were going to move that grandfather clock outside into my truck and that I could have it.

That old clock was probably the best gift I could have ever received. Not only was it worth a bit of money, but it had all of our families memories stored inside of it.