The main dresser or cabinet, better described—for it was in the dinningroom of the house on Cayuga Street where our family had moved to in 1958—the main dresser held the black Mantel Clock of my grandfathers; as would be described, a long and dark wooden clock, turn of the century type, as I recall, a Seth Thomas, with two cabinets below it which kept the doilies, linens and other such things in place, for the dinning table. On top of the long stretched out dresser (piece of furniture) a section was for my mother’s things or at least that is where her keys and such items would end up each day after work, so she could grab them quickly in the morning as she dashed off to the stockyards in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, about thirteen miles away; and then, there—right in the middle of the [cupboard] cabinet, was the old turn of the century wooden clock, black with pillars on it. Black as black can be. Shinny black. It looked like it had a porcelain face, and it might have said ‘Made by Seth Thomas,?in it—on the face of the clock. As one walked through the kitchen, to get to the living room crossing over through the dinning room, it was to the left, with a mirror adjusted on the wall right over the clock, you could see the dinning room table if you stood right in front of it, and its six wooden chairs.
It was an eight-day clock; it rang on the half-hour, and hour. Grandpa would wind it up every so often, no one else dared to touch it. The Old Russia Bear, had it there ever since I can remember; my grandmother, whom had never seen us boys, my brother and I, died in 1933, died at the age of 33, died of double-pneumonia, her picture was next to the clock, on the right hand side, to the south. Also there was a cigar box full of coins, mostly pennies, but other coins as well; —and I liked to check them out for the dates, I saved pennies, old pennies back then. I always wished I could find the 1909 S VDB penny, boy what a prize it would had been, but I would have to wait 45-years, and then buy one for $800-dollars. One time I got a 1914 penny, and someone said the ‘D?had been cut off it, so it was not worth even a penny; my luck. I never had much luck, only a lot of good breaks in life, so I didn’t count on luck for anything. But my grandfather would allow me to check the pennies out, off and on during my formative years, and when I got older, I’d end up buying a black mantel clock (like that penny), and I would eventually send my son a black mantel clock who lived several states from me. It is funny how we absorb life’s little idiosyncrasies; more oft than not we pick up and live our childhood perhaps sideways—after our childhood is long gone; what we couldn’t do then, we fix it up now. But it was nice he thought of me; all because of a clock and a box of pennies, we both found something to talk about, and he didn’t talk much.
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