Mondaugen's Unknown Architect

8: My Grandmother's Grandfather Clock

30 Objects in 30 Essays

From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.

Until three days ago, I had not heard the chimes of my grandmother's grandfather clock in 30 years.

Objects come. They go. Some endure. Some come back.

Those chimes brought back so much I had not thought of in years, perhaps forgotten -- a flood of my grandmother's sweetness and light. Her home. Those moments growing up.

Bong bong bong bong... The Big Ben chimes.

My grandmother Aileen lived on the second floor of a split-level on Murray Ave in Milwaukee, about a mile from my house. She taught home economics classes, mostly at night, at the local community college, starting in the 1930's and only retiring in the late 1980's. In her spare time she loved to make decoupage: lamps, wood purses, wall art, and much more. When she was younger, she would give whistling concerts and slide show presentations on her travels in the local high school auditorium. She cooked big dinners for our family, always an enormous Thanksgiving turkey, a ham at Christmas, with all the trimmings and special desserts. She had her hair done twice a month, sometimes with a blue rinse. Lavender and purple were her favorite colors, and she enjoyed wearing a fancy hat. Strangers on the street would compliment her hats, and the ensuing conversations could last an hour or more. She drove a '71 red convertible Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. She had a favorite 78 rpm record of zither music that she would ask me to play on her phonograph, because she wasn't sure how. My grandmother Aileen was very kind and sweet, and I loved her much. She seemed to enjoy her time with me. I have very fond memories of her and deep gratitude for how she cared for me as a child.

Bong bong bong bong...

My step-grandfather Harvey was blind, and mostly listened to baseball on the radio, drinking bourbon on the rocks, smoking his pipe and sitting in his comfy chair by the fireplace. I found him scary, even though he had the most gentle laugh. He would tell stories about his work that I couldn't understand. He died when I was 7, so I never got to know him well. Grandmother Aileen loved him much, and once told me, when I was older, that he was fantastic in bed.

Bong bong bong bong...

Growing up, I spent many weekends with my grandmother. We would go the park, or to the Domes, or to the zoo. I'd help her cook in the kitchen, and with the household chores. She made the best chicken liver sandwiches. I'd sleep in the guest bedroom, where Harvey had slept. There were bird prints on the wall, and a chest of drawers that held his bow ties and medals from the Second World War. The whole house had white wall-to-wall carpeting, so I ran everywhere in my socks, a big treat. She liked Louis XIV furniture, and had a bombe dresser in her bedroom that she decoupaged with Fragonard ladies on swings. In the hallway between her bedroom and the bathroom was a tall clock that would chime on the quarter hours. I'd sing along with it "bong bong bong bong". She told me they were the "Big Ben tones," from a clock in England. I imagined Big Ben as a clock about the same size, though fancier.

Bong bong bong bong...

For you, it might be smells that trigger memories, or the smells that return with memories. For me it's sounds. The ticking of the grandfather clock when I lay awake in bed. The gentle chimes every quarter hour. They somehow embody my grandmother's apartment and that golden time with her.  

My grandmother had an expert tune and lubricate the clock every year. It was special to her, for it came from her father's house, and she grew up listening to the chimes. My mother did as well. She told me she once tried to open the case with a knife, and got in big trouble. I looked and found some tiny scratches. So strange to think that my mother, now in her 80's, made them when she was a small child. And now it is in my living room in Chicago, chiming as I write this.

My children did not grow up with it. The clock had a long hiatus between the death of my grandmother in the early 90's and today. In retrospect, it is a miracle that the clock survived, and in working order.

In her later years, the clock fell into disrepair and stopped running. Some friend or visitor had scrambled the order of the hammers by bending their supports. Perhaps it was a drunken prank to hear the chimes backwards. Or a family member who couldn't take the endless chiming any more. It was hard to say, and she didn't get it fixed. My grandmother had became senile and forgetful. I delayed graduate school and stayed with her over a summer trying to help; but in the end, my mother put her in an institution, and she died two years later. I don't remember hearing the clock over that summer.

My grandmother left the clock to my mother, but she didn't want it, so I disassembled the clock and moved it my home in Connecticut. It was too tall to fit under the low ceilings of my home. So it went to my father's house, where there was room. As was his way with things, as soon as the clock was in his house, it became his. The prospect of repairing it was tricky. It involved negotiating comments about the potential "racket" it would make if it ran. It involved accessing his house (by negotiated appointment, which usually took a few phone calls). It involved learning about clocks I didn't understand well. And it would likely involve money that I didn't have. As I was the only one would would likely enjoy it, and I didn't live at my dad's place, or even visit often, I gave up. It stood, partially assembled, in his damp and moldy living room, silent, for 25 years. 

On his death, my father gave the clock to my step-mother. Thankfully, she did not seem to want it, or want to sell it, and told me I should take it. I put the parts in my car and drove them to Chicago, where, thankfully, the 9 ft. ceilings could accommodate its 7' 7" height.

I found a book online about cleaning and repairing old clocks. I read a few pages. I learned a few things. I reassembled the clock, cleaned it, lubricated it, untangled the twisted chime hammers, tested and adjusted them. Then I swung the pendulum. To my surprise, it worked. It worked well. The clock has run well for three days, bringing back so much joy in old memories.

This old clock conjures precious memories that no one can take from me. The clock is not precious in itself except were I to embed my memories in it. I am glad to have the clock again, but only because it brings back what I had forgotten about my grandmother. I expect my kids will, when I die, sell it, for it is meaningless to them. Or perhaps they will visit often, and hear the chimes, and associate good times with their dad with the chimes. Or maybe their kids will. Then they might want to keep it. Or not, as it really needs a big room and a family of heavy sleepers.

 

The Dreams of Architects

I read somewhere that architects build nothing, instead that they create drawings and models towards selling a dream.

Once sold, that dream becomes the problem of tradesmen. They in turn interpret and transform those dreams into something practical, and thereby something the architect cannot understand.

Architecture sits in the window of marketing and looks out at the trade of making. Imagining a room is nothing like standing in it, or anything like building it.

I think it's time the core of the profession got out from behind that window. It needs a better starting point than dreams, or even in the hands that build. It needs to begin with an understanding of what it's like to stand in the room that's built.

 

Mies van der Rohe's career epitomizes this issue. He began his career as a tradesman--a stone mason--and never studied architecture in a university. Drafting for another architect, then on his own, his early work is traditional and conventional. Then Mies's designs became highly conceptual. Some of them were not buildable -- towers of glass and steel that the engineers of the day shook their head at. Others that were built were not entirely livable. His Tugendhat house was "a showpiece, not a home" said one critic. (Two details: the curved walls in the main space didn't allow its owners to hang any pictures, and the dining table was secured to the floor, and not moveable). He sited the famous Farnsworth house on a river's flood plane, apparently suggesting that when it did flood, Farnsworth could get to her house by canoe.

These are precisely Miesean dreams turned real, with all the problems that ensue when fantasy encounters reality.

Both the Tugendhat and Farnsworth houses are held up as "modernist masterpieces" -- successes by the standards of the the industry, the critics, and even the people with money who pay for such things.

I love art. But I don't want to live in it. A surreal Dali landscape is fascinating. But please don't let me fall into that universe. Art is for visiting, and craft for living.

Mies understood how to build with his hands, and thereby had some idea of the importance of function in tools, in what tools produce, and the fundamental role of tools in human life. But he apparently had little to no sympathy with the people who bought or used his tools. What did he feel when he stood in the rooms he designed? I don't believe he ever lived in one. He was a visitor to them. Like Stanley Kubrick late in his career, was Mies playing an fundamental joke on the world -- creating spaces for the human body and mind that denied the human body and celebrated only the mind?

Like star-bellied Sneeches, we are told the Farnsworth house is a modenist masterpiece, and so we enjoy it. We are happy to have the privilege of working in a skyscraper with glass doors, no matter how many times we smack our noses on them. We gladly bathe in bathrooms full of glass, glorious light, and the neighbors' eyes, and feel provincial in our desire for curtains. Modernist masterpiece aesthetics feel right, but they don't feel good.

In what buildings, then, are we allowed to feel good?

 

Architects should begin not in aesthetics, but in sociology and psychology. They should dream of environments that are true tools for living, in the way human beings live in their bodies and minds, and not just in their dreams.

They should sit and watch people live and work. They should see what people can't see themselves about their habits, their preferences, their annoyances. And they should then design to make life a bit easier, a bit more beautiful.

I have yet to come across any particular praise for a building or home that is exceptional for its intuitiveness, usefulness, and beauty. I'm sure this underground exists, and I'll find it eventually. But the profession as a whole won't strive towards these goals until they are rewarded and applauded over and above artistic, personal aesthetic expression, and intellectual exploration in the mainstream.

Can the architect of empathy sell the dream of beauty and usefulness over the heads of the academic taste makers? Can they hand dreams to tradesmen towards buildings that are truly enjoyable to live in?

These benches

"These benches are shaped to the human body. In addition their serpentine design facilitates the formation of conversational groups, for those watching children at play on the terrace. Gaudi's designs are not abstract and inhuman as they may sometimes appear. Human needs and their satisfaction are carefully considered. Perhaps it is due to his understanding of these needs, that Gaudi's work has always met with popular acceptance, while often being regarded as eccentric by the more sophisticated public."

--James Johnson Sweeney and Josep Lluis Sert, Gaudi (1960), 141

 

Gaudi practiced the architecture of empathy.

7: On my grandfather's watch

30 Objects in 30 Essays

From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.

---

 

When I was fourteen, my father showed me his father's gold pocket watch. I was allowed to look, but not touch. The dial shimmered with silver. He opened the back, and I saw inside a glittering of mysterious interconnected wheels, gears and parts. It had my grandfather's initials engraved on it, both on the back on on the gold pencil fob, initials that were also mine. It then went back into a locked drawer. "One day, son," my father said, "this will be yours."

Though I saw it just once, it became the token of my father's blessing. One day I would inherit the watch. One day I would be worthy of touching it. The golden watch would go to the golden boy. And I would know he loved me and approved of me.

I cannot overstate the significance of the watch. In a family obsessed with objects and their value, the gold watch was the singular item of worth in the house. My mother would talk about how valuable it was, and my father would stay silent. She would suggest taking it out and letting us all see it, and he would remain silent. But it was too valuable. Like a holy relic. I had seen it once. That was enough. One day, though, he would bestow it on me.

 

This summer, my father died suddenly, and horribly, eleven days after breaking his hip at age 88. He was tied to his hospital bed because he was combative with staff. The cause of death was pneumonia from aspirated food and drink.

In a four-page will that got his name wrong, he gave everything of his to my step-mother, also making her executor. I was, apparently, not to get the gold watch, or any object from my childhood, except, possibly, as a gift from my step-mother.

My sister's disorientation and sense of betrayal that her own father would disinherit her was extreme. They had gotten along fine. He had always talked of the things she would have, and that I would too, after he died. For me, the disinheritance was not unexpected.

I grew up in fear of my father. Most of our time together was spent working for him, using his tools, fixing his many machines, repairing the house. My time was his time, without compromise. Once, when I had a date over to the house, suddenly it was time to repair the roof. The choice for my date was to join me on the roof, stay alone in the house, or go away.

Damage to any of his things would be met with rage. If they were special things, that rage demanded my annihilation. I learned to make him laugh and thereby avoid his wrath. I found in this dynamic a semblance of connection, reading kindness and goodwill into his laughing smiles. I learned quickly, though, that no real demands could be put on our connection. His attitude was that I needed to go fix myself somewhere else to be a presentable son to him, to be his golden boy, which was my sole duty. His methods were belittlement, bullying and shunning. Eventually, slowly, painfully, I realized that I was serving the wrong master in life, and no longer wanted to be his golden boy, but to be my own person, with a different set of values. I demanded he stop belittling me. He replied with angry, paranoid accusations of my worthlessness. There would be no discussion if I didn't please him. We became distant. He continued with his "one day son..." to the very end, but it was a belittling joke.

 

My father left massive collections of motorcycles, guns, tools, books, and artwork. To my eye, they were a huge array of horcruxes, little repositories of childhood shame, punishment, feelings of worthlessness, his greed and possessiveness. In many ways the disinheritance was a blessing. I would not have the job of sorting through his life and values.

I told my step mother all that I wanted was a copy of his unedited, unpublished novel. He had refused to share it with me in his lifetime. Perhaps I could understand him better through reading it, now that he couldn't say no. She agreed.

My sister, though, asked my step-mother about the watch. She told my sister that the watch could not simply be given, it was too valuable, and had to be appraised. It seemed likely she would liquidate the watch for its cash value, and just didn't want to say it outright. It was gold, after all. What use would she have for an old pocket watch, one with initials engraved on it that did not match any of her children?

I had completely forgotten about the watch, and the memory made me laugh. The confirmation of being his golden boy was no longer possible. There would be no final approval as his son, and heir. The memory of having been shown the watch became ridiculous, the pomposity of the moment, the narcissism, the twisted priorities. The watch reemerged as a token of my father's deep personal problems.

 

My step-mother, in an act of reconciliation, informed me I could have anything of his that she could not sell. I thought about it, and accepted that offer, as some of his books and hand tools would be useful. She rewarded me with an insult for greedily taking too many things for someone who only wanted his novel.

 

Twenty years before, in one of our bigger fights, I accused my father of loving his things more than any person, especially his children. He denied it, of course, but then explained that unconditional love did not exist, that children had to earn their parent's love, and part of earning that love was respect for the parent's things. That argument marked one of our last serious discussions. His obsession with his valuable things would surface as a paranoia about their theft, mainly that I would steal them, was plotting to steal them, or had stolen them when he had misplaced them. Finding them later, he would reiterate that he still knew I was up to no good, that he was "onto me, and that I wasn't going to get away with it," but never reveal what I was supposed to be up to. His obsession with valuable things grew into the ownership of things he didn't own. Many of my possessions, that I had bought and paid for, magically became his if I left them at home for too long. When I'd ask why he had put several of my rifles into his collection, he would deny they were mine. I didn't challenge him, and let them be gifts. For my step-mother to now sell them for cash was a kind of perfect burial for them, a kind of whitewashing of their history into new hands that knew nothing of the roles they played dividing a father and a son.

Collecting, possessing, treasuring, was the my-precious-miasma of my youth, every object a kind of trap. I saw clearly how the worship of ownership and power takes us down to the bottom of a dark wet cave of self-importance and self-indulgence. I am no Marie Kondo, but objects in my life must have a purpose -- usefulness, beauty, or a good memory, not for mere enrichment, or the temptation and manipulation of the people in my life. I do keep some things out of laziness, hope that one day they'll be useful, and others with bad associations, mainly gifts from my father, for reasons that perhaps therapy would reveal.

 

In a perverse moment, I thought to ask my step-mother if she would sell the watch to me. Like Esau, I would acquire my father's blessing by other means! But then I wondered what would I pay for it? Not much. I realized that even $10 was too much. I had no clear recollection of what it looked like, no particular use for it. I really didn't want the thing. But apparently I still wanted the blessing.

 

A week ago, my sister called to say that our step-mother had decided to give her some family items, as she was feeling less anxious -- sets of china, a 19th century portrait of a cow that had hung in our family homestead, and the gold watch. She said she had discovered that it was some off-brand, and not the fancy brand that my father had told her it was. It was apparently not worth enough to sell, and thereby OK to give.

Holding the watch for the first time ever was a strange, weightless experience. I half expected some thunderclap, or zombie-hand clapped on my shoulder. But nothing happened. It was just a nice old watch.

It looked much smaller and simpler than I had remembered. The fob had my grandfather's initials, two other sets of initials with a line between them, and a date in 1930. I asked my cousin, the family historian, if he recognized the initials or the date, and he didn't. The brand, Phelps and Perry, came from a small shop near Wall Street, where my grandfather worked, long since closed. The fob, if not the watch itself, could have been a gift to him for being best-man at a wedding. More than this, I will likely never know.

 

The way past is through.

I could let this watch smolder away in my psyche, and remain a token of my father's scorn and step-mother's insults. Or I could redefine it. Objects, unlike words, can lose and gain their associations easily. Their past is easily forgotten, and thereby easily redefined. I sometimes wonder about the vintage wedding rings in jewelry shops, and their forgotten stories. As they're in shops, they were not successfully passed along to another generation.The buyer has the opportunity to give those rings a new, and happier story.

I carry a burden of pain that this watch represents. A father's murky and uncertain disinheritance, and watching the sale of my childhood objects, is nothing light or simple. In spite of this, I remain my father's son, raised in his house by his rules, and much of my mental architecture was built by him. I still feel the pull of his character, and catch myself acting like him; but I found many other fathers with guidance that resonated. My son doesn't have to carry any of my burden. My task as his father is to understand better what I give him, in love and in anger, and to do better than I received.

The plan is to have my son's initials engraved on the inside now, on the other side of mine. While I still have the watch, he will be with me. When I give it to him, I will be with him. When I give it to him it will be accompanied by my blessing, because my son is a wonderful human being, and I am most proud to be his dad. To carry the watch now will be a reminder to be a better dad, in spite of any and all of my human failings, for he is my son and heir, and a multi-generational watch can be a fun tradition, no matter how off-brand it is. There is room in the watch for the initials of generations yet-to-be. And I look forward to the day, soon, that he holds it, actually touches it, even opens it, and puts it in his pocket.