Group gets Santa Paula's historic clock ticking again

By Lisa McKinnon
Ventura County Star
Thursday, October 4, 2007

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. Instead, ask: Is it on time?

Until recently, the answer to that question in relation to the antique clock atop the historic Odd Fellows Lodge in Santa Paula was a resounding "no."

"It hadn't struck for quite a few years, and some of the hands had stopped moving," said Northridge resident Ken McWilliams, who teaches clock repair at Ventura College. Given that each of the clock's four faces told a different time, "you could walk around the block and go through several time zones," he added.

Enter McWilliams and fellow members of the newly formed Ventura County chapter of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors. This summer, they mounted an all-volunteer effort to get the 1905 Seth Thomas clock running — and chiming — again.

First order of business: clean off the pile of rusty grease that was literally gunking up the works.

"We split up the parts and worked on them individually at home, then met back at the clock tower to put it all back together again," said Mike Schmidt of Oxnard, president of the Ventura County chapter of the NAWCC and a member of chapters 75 and 52 in the San Fernando Valley and the Central Coast, respectively.

Helping to divvy up the work were Richard Henderson of Ojai, a 28-year member of the association; Bill Robinson of Ventura, who photo-documented the project; and retired Santa Paula fire chief-turned-attorney and clock fancier Paul Skeels, who ended up joining the Odd Fellows in the course of the project.

At 10:30 a.m. Saturday, the men will again gather at the lodge at 868 E. Main St. to give a public presentation about the clock, its history and their efforts to bring it back to near-mint condition.

They could have celebrated the feat in the summer, when the bulk of the restoration was completed. "But the Odd Fellows building doesn't have air conditioning, and it was just too darn hot in July," McWilliams said with a laugh.

Besides, the clock has since needed the occasional tweak.

"A couple of weeks ago, someone pointed out that the face on the Main Street side had fallen about an hour behind," Skeels said. "So we went up there and discovered we needed to make another adjustment in the linkage between the dials and the clock itself."

Making such adjustments is no easy matter. The clock is inside the bronze-colored tower that is clearly visible from the street but accessible only by climbing through a hatch in the roof. Further, the clock is at the top of the tower, enclosed in a wooden cabinet surrounded by a rudimentary plywood walkway that is reached via an aluminum ladder. The space is a tight fit for two people, let alone five clock re-assemblers holding an assortment of irreplaceable parts in their hands.

Mounted on what looks like a metal work table that still bears its original, forest-green paint job and a plaque commemorating its birthplace as the Seth Thomas Clock Co. of Thomaston, Conn., the clock is topped with a rotor assembly. Radiating out from the rotor are four metal shafts that move the gears that in turn move the hands on the clock faces, which feature painted-on numerals. A spare wooden hand hangs from a nail inside the tower.

That Santa Paula still has a community clock is something of a miracle, Schmidt said. Many such clock towers have been torn down or replaced by clocks with modernized works that require little or no maintenance.

"It's our intention to keep maintaining the clock, to go there periodically to make adjustments," Schmidt added. One such occasion will be when clocks "fall back" to standard time Nov. 4.

The Santa Paula clock did undergo some modernization in 1952, when its pendulum was replaced by an electric motor. For its most recent refurbishment, a replacement motor was donated by its manufacturer, Bodine Electric Co. of Chicago. A $500 donation by the Santa Paula Historical Society, which uses a sketch of the clock tower as its logo, paid for electrical work that was necessary to complete the project.

Fixing the bell — or, more specifically, its striking mechanism — was the last item on the group's to-do list.

Made in 1903 by the Buckeye Bell Foundry of Cincinnati, the bell may originally have been hung inside the tower judging by some of the hardware in the rafters, Schmidt said. It now hangs outside over the tower door and is connected to the clock via what Skeels laughingly called a "Rube Goldberg-like series of cables and levers" that cause a hammer to drop against the bell's outer surface. "It isn't ideal, but it's greatly improved," Skeels said.

Nor are the results overly loud.

"My office is about two blocks away, and I can't hear the clock's chimes from there," Skeels added. "Maybe that's a good thing for our neighbors."