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Historic clock to be timin’ and chimin’ |
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Wednesday, 01 October 2008 |
By Buck Traxler, I-O Editor
 RESTORATION CREW – From the left, Francis Erickson, Wayne Anderson, George Tornga and Harold Olson show off a work in progress on “the clock.” They have spent a combined time of over 500 hours in getting the clock, which used to hang on the old PGC building at 4th and Main, into working condition. It will be on display on Oct. 11 during the annual Harvest Festival. Their goal to have it hung in 2009 to help celebrate the Conrad Centennial. I-O Photo by Buck Traxler
Eventually its time came to an end and it wouldn’t tell time anymore and the people of the PCA wanted it taken down.
“The Clock” as it has become to be known was pulled down from the building in 1957 and was given to Dick Preputin who gave the massive timepiece a resting place at his farm – for the next 50 years.
Time marches on. Eventually at a number of meetings of the Pondera Historical Association (PHA), the clock came up in conversation. Francis Erickson remembered that it was out at the Preputin Farm.
The idea to begin a restoration project that came to life when Preputin gave the clock to the PHA, telling the association, “It’s yours if you want it.”
The original clock company was long out of business, but George Tornga found a clock company in Massachusetts that restored and supplied parts for old clocks.
Before work on the clock began it was a major piece of a float in the 2007 Whoop-Up Trail Days Celebration parade.
Since then, Erickson, Tornga, Harold Olson and retired CHS art teacher Wayne Anderson have been meeting almost every Wednesday evening to work on the clock, now housed in a section of the Depot building.
Tornga recalls, “When this project got started, I almost wondered if I hadn’t overstepped my boundaries a little, or a lot.”
However, like the legendary Phoenix bird that lived for 500 years, burned itself and then youthfully rose from the ashes, “the clock” has been transformed into a youthful timepiece.
The clock itself is 11 feet in length, 35 inches square and weighs about a 1,000 pounds.
The all-volunteer crew has over 500 hours of elbow bending work in bringing the clock back to life.
The clock will be on display at the corner of 4th and Main St during the upcoming Harvest Festival on Oct. 11 where it was originally hung.
It is the goal of the PHA to be able to re-hang the clock in 2009, which is the Centennial year for Conrad.
One of the little known items about the clock is that it had musical chimes as part of its internal workings.
Now, the antique timepiece will be brought into the 21st Century with a computerized programmable music device. It can be programmed from over a little 300 feet away.
Tornga indicated that the program box would be located and controlled from the Orpheum Theatre/Wiegand Auditorium. A classic case of the old versus new merging to work together.
Erickson told the I-O, “We still have about $2,500 to go before we reach our goal of $10,000 to pay for the restoration of the clock.”
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