Thirteen bells

It’s a Tuesday and the light of early afternoon chisels the limestone of the gothic-like Picton United Church. I’m set to follow Gerry Drennan on his maintenance tour of the clock that rests in the peak of the church tower.

We head into the building through a side door and up a few flights of stairs to a balcony sprung over the vaulted interior. Below us, row upon row of pews wait silently before a forest of pipes that rise from the church organ. We arrive at a squat wooden door: “Mind your head,” Gerry tells me as I duck into a turretlike space. My eyes adjust to dim light.

“They would pull the weights up from here.” Gerry points to a stack of encyclopaedia-size iron blocks. “This set was for the clock itself,” he tells me. “On the next floor you’ll see something similar for the bell. Since it only goes on the hour it didn’t need as much distance,” he continues.

The feel of the twelve-foot-square enclosure is time-worn. I follow Gerry up a dozen narrow steps as we continue our conversation. “I hear the hour bell from home. It’s two blocks away,” he tells me. “I call Ottawa and get the official time on the NRC telephone talking clock to check accuracy.”

At the top of the rise Gerry opens a trap door. The room sits in stained light from narrow windows. “Here is one weight and the other is up where the bell is,” he tells me. “The stairs get a little steeper from here.”

No kidding! The ladder- like ascent leads to another trap door. Beyond, amidst intersecting steel rods, the bronze bell lazes in the shadows. It’s about three feet in diameter at the sound-bow and about the size of a heavy armchair. “This was a pulley mechanism if you wanted to manually ring the bell,” Gerry explains. “It would swing in a wide arc while inside…you see the clanger?” I peer under the lip. “You can imagine the weight shifting when it rocked. Over time that affected the whole tower and it began to lean. A friend of mine who belonged to the church, Woodrow Blakely, helped raise money to have these cross-supports installed on every floor.” I remember to watch my head as I check out the details. “Now, instead of a clanger and the bell swinging, we have a hammer to strike it.” I can’t resist. I give the bell skirt a tap. “Donated by Stuart Wilson. Wesleyan Church Picton 1861,” a plaque reads. “He gave it for the use of the town and the church,” Gerry tells me. I rub my hand over the foundry mark: “Meneely’s – West Troy New York.”

Up the final rise there is a repeat trap door setup. The space is warmer than previous floors; the tame, even light is inspiring.

Gerry Drennan demonstrates as the mechanism is revealed. He explains a jungle of cogs and wheels and levers; most in quiet, steady motion.

The tower’s back wall holds a three-foot round window overlooking Macaulay Mountain. Each of the remaining walls houses a seven-foot diameter clock face of opaque milk glass.

“I can’t set the clock at night,” Gerry tells me. “I need the sunlight for the shadows of the hands,” he adds. “Everything is in reverse and sometime I have to get my watch and look at it backwards to get the positions right.” I take in the moment.

“I retired here 13 years ago,” Gerry reminisces. “I have insomnia and would lie in bed and know the time by the hour. Except no one was looking after the clock then and it was never on time; the bells were out of whack,” he continues. “I don’t belong to the church but my background is in tool and die making with IBM so I volunteered to help. They turned me down; didn’t want me up here; who is this guy from Toronto who wants up in our clock tower they needed to know? Finally Woodrow Blakely cleared the way.”

Toward the middle of the room stands a large wooden box-like structure. “Someone in the past built this…all insulated. Had problems in the 1800s with cold and frost I imagine. There’s a heater in there now,” Gerry describes.

“All of these doors open up for maintenance,” Gerry demonstrates as the mechanism is revealed. He explains a jungle of cogs and wheels and levers; most in quiet, steady motion. A name plate reads: “Sperry Company 1881.”

Gerry Drennan looks over the inner workings of the clock.

“I had no one to show me. I would come up here and sit for hours to study it…the weights removed when electrified, the mechanism needed attention. George McKnight, a machine shop teacher in Napanee, along with his 13 students came to help.”

Gerry touches a series of rods. “The students added grease nipples when they machined these new universal joints for the drive shafts. This one comes up to a planetary gear and then goes to a gear for each face…and here are a number of spur gears, one for the hour and one for the minute,” he shows me. “I’ve had problems with this relay but a friend from IBM recently came here and solved it.”

Gerry describes the relay workings and tells how two years ago…“it’s two o’clock in the morning and I hear 13 bells. And it keeps ringing,” he begins. “I jump out of bed and run over here with my pants over my pyjamas. I climb up in the dark and turn the power off and on my way down I hear: “Who’s up there?” It was the police. There were complaints in town about the bell. “Can you imagine if it had kept ringing,” Gerry finishes.

Lemme see now. That’s 52 times in an hour times 24 hours…holy smokes! I imagine an outbreak of insomnia in Picton!