My family history is attached to this clock

by John K.

My grandmother wasn't really one for going in depth in her stories unless you pried the information from her arthritis-filled hands, but I eventually got the story, and the clock, out of her.

For some reason she was embarrassed by this story in particular. Maybe it is because of the superstition of fate that is tied into it, or maybe it is because she is embarrassed she was such an attachment to an old grandfather clock.

On my twenty-sixth birthday she gave me her Ridgeway Grandfather Clock, she always emphasized how the model 9112 was special.

Each time she pointed at the clock, her index finger extended as far out as it could go, she would repeat "Nine, One, One, Two and don't forget it!" Well, I guess back during World War II she was working as a secretary in a military office in Japan.

One day a salesman had come in off the street to take a break. He wasn't one of those smooth salesmen that would be able to sell a rock to a billionaire, but he was an honest man.

I don't know if my grandmother genuinely fell in love with the grandfather clock when he showed it to her or if she was just taking pity on the man, but she ended up buying it.

He hauled it off the back of his truck outside and promptly sat it down in her cubicle. That salesman sold her more than a clock though, he sold her his heart.

The salesman kept coming back, and within a year they were married. The reason the model number ended up becoming so special to her was because she thought it was fate.

They met in September, the 9th month, he proposed to her in 11 months, and they ended up having two kids.

If anything, that grandfather clock has plenty of history.