The Clock

My parents came from Texas to stay with Martha and David while Wally and I went to Iceland and Denmark with a group of old men, members of the Scandinavian Stamp Collectors Club of Chicago.

David surprised me when we told him we were going to Copenhagen. First, I was pleased that our eleven-year-old knew where Copenhagen was. I’d tried to teach geography to seventh graders who couldn’t find Africa on a world map.

Second, he surprised me by his enthusiasm. With a big smile, he said, “You’ll get to see the clock!.” Then he ran across the street to get his pal, Sandy Wu.

“Sandy! Sandy!” he called out. “My Mom and Dad are going to see the clock!”

I was as ignorant as those seventh graders when it came to knowing about the clock. My son and his friends learned about it in science class in their fifth grade in Woodridge, Illinois. The Danes built a clock which not only told kept accurate time of every second of every hour of every day, it also showed the precise time of phases of the moon, predicted the time of solar and lunar eclipses, and other marvels.

The children told us to be sure to see the clock in the Town Hall in Copenhagen.

Wally and I arrived in Copenhagen on a warm, sunny day, so pleasant and relaxing after chilly Iceland that most of us, stamp collectors and me, dosed off in the warmth of the bus taking us to our hotel. We woke up to carry our bags to the elevator.

As soon as we entered the room, while Wally set down the suitcases, I went to the window and looked out. Just to the right below me was a large, paved square with buses pulling in and out. Facing me across the square, like a postcard, was the Town Hall, an imposing red brick building, looking much like a large Victorian railroad station. The clock on the central tower was not THE CLOCK, but it was big and impressive, the clock that Danes use to time their daily lives, like the Brits do Big Ben in London.

“Wally,” I said. “Let’s not unpack now. Let’s go see the clock.”

In five minutes we walked across the square and up the steps to the front entrance of Town Hall. In a special side room we found the clock behind a glass partition. The size of a football scoreboard, we watched the slowly turning of numerous dials and the silent swinging of the pendulum.

A wonder indeed! We would not have known to go see it, except for a couple of young children.

I bought postcards to send home to David and Sandy.