Events of Tuesday, November 2, 2010

          Today we woke up cold after a rather restful night in the Costco parking lot. We made and unmade beds, got dressed, and relished a breakfast of cereal, bananas, and vanilla yogurt that tasted funny to everyone but Daddy.

          Then we drove to our first stop of the day, the American Clock and Watch Museum, in Bristol, Connecticut. As we started out, I went back to the “master bedroom” of the RV to put up the tension rod between the closet and the upper cupboards, which we use to keep the closet doors closed while we drive. Mom, unbeknownst to me, headed down a very steep hill, and I, still slightly off-balance, did a face plant into where the back window meets the wall. I smashed the blinds, and they looked crooked, so I fixed that first, being the perfectionist that I am, and then realized that my nose was dripping blood. My nose has never bled before, so I was really scared, so scared in fact that I started crying. And I rarely cry when I get hurt. I rushed to get a dark-colored towel, being considerate of the fact that blood would stain any light-colored cloth. Then Mom told me to ice my nose, which I thought was stupid, because it was bleeding. But it did help. She pulled Harvey over as soon as possible and felt my nose to make sure it wasn’t broken, and it wasn’t. By the time we arrived at the American Clock and Watch Museum, it had stopped bleeding, and only felt like a minor bruise.

          The American Clock and Watch Museum was amazing and totally unique. Each clock we saw was completely different. We began in the Industrial Revolution exhibit. Here, we discovered Eli Terry, who should be credited as the founder of the Industrial Revolution instead of Eli Whitney with his interchangeable clock parts and clock factory system. Then when the time neared eleven o’clock, we drifted into the grandfather clock wing, where we were told was the best place to hear them all strike on the hour. It was exciting. We heard one go off, and rushed around among the numerous clocks trying to figure out which one it was, and then watched in awe until it was finished, then started off for the next one. This is the perfect room for those with short attention spans!

          But there were other treasures to be found in the American Clock and Watch Museum. One hand clocks, such as the English lantern clock, also the oldest in the museum, were used before the technology of the pendulum was perfected.

          We also learned that the name “grandfather clock” came from a popular song from the year 1867. The type of clock we know as a grandfather clock is more correctly referred to as a hall clock, a tall clock, or a longcase clock, among clock connoisseurs.

          Another unique clock we saw had two dials with different times, both correct. This was because, prior to 1883, each town observed “local time” based on its median with the sun – exactly overhead at noon. As the sun moves consistently east to west, noon varies as one travels east or west. This caused chaos on the railroads as the time would be different in each town they passed through. They successfully pushed for the standard time zones which were established in November of 1883. Eventually, this “railroad time” evolved into the standard time zones we have today.

          We saw Ignatz, the craziest clock in the world, which features a flying pendulum. I can’t really explain how it works, but a video will soon be on our website where you can watch this curious- looking clock. It was first manufactured by the New Haven Clock Company in 1885. It is a terrible timekeeper, but who really pays any attention to the dial?

          They also had a Hickory Dickory Dock Clock display, complete with seven mice running up seven different clocks! There were so many clocks to see that the time just whizzed by, and it was soon time to go!

          We drove to a nearby park and had lunch, and then drove on to the Mark Twain House and Museum. We watched the introductory documentary, directed and narrated by Ken Burns. Then we started through the exhibits, only to realize that it was time for our guided tour of the house where Mark Twain, whose real name is Samuel Clemens, penned his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, among other great works. Our tour guide was young, with long red hair and awesome black, knee-high boots and a gray skirt suit and a working clock pendant on a chain. But we don’t remember her name. Sorry! She gave us a very short and succinct tour of all three stories of the house that Mark Twain owned from September 19‚ 1874 to 1891, though they didn’t sell it until 1903.

          My favorite fact about Mark Twain after that experience is that of his birth and death. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” Mark Twain wrote in 1909. “It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” And with this uncanny prediction, Samuel L. Clemens indeed died in the year of that rare occurrence on April 21, 1910. It has now been a hundred years since his death.

          Another highlight for my family at the Mark Twain House and Museum was the quotes that lined the walls everywhere. Here are a few of our favorites. I’m not saying we agree with all of these, but I am saying they amused us.                   - Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

                 - Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. 

                 - Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

                 - Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

                 - I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. 

          After our concise tour, we finished up the exhibits and explored the gift shop. Then Daddy complained nicely about the brevity of our tour as it was supposed to last 50 minutes and barely made 30. As a result, we were given a Mark Twain book and a set of stationary. Yeah! We then drove to see Daddy’s friends, the Spragues, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Amherst is in far western Massachusetts, so we decided that it would be wiser to visit them from Connecticut.

          The first thing we did with the Spragues was to go out to dinner at a lovely local Italian eatery called Bertucci’s. It actually used to be a car repair shop; where the bays stood are now large glass window. The restaurant’s motto is “Everything is better by the brick oven”. We enjoyed a very delicious dinner there, courtesy of our now good friends. The Spragues are very nice people. They remind me of my grandparents, and they have a wonderful sense of humor. Our waitress was also very nice. Her name was Adrian. She often joined in our conversation and joked with us as if she knew us already and was eating dinner with us.

          I grew very tired during the course of my delicious dinner of shrimp fettuccine alfredo, so all I remember after dinner was driving home and going to bed in the downstairs floor of the Spragues’ house. As I drifted off to sleep on a wonderfully comfortable flattened futon, perfectly warm and content, I remember thinking, “How high, how high the ceiling is in a real house. So very high and far away it is. What wonderful ceilings they have here.”