Melanie C. Campos ~ MahTame

WHAT’S MISSING IS THE BROWN CLOCK…

Stillness is calming my inner soul as I’m taken back to the Diamond R farm just about five miles north of the Wichita Mountains. I’m reminded of the times when I would feel a laziness trying to overcome me and my eyelids drooping to a complete close. The sofa was long and beige, with a soft-roughish covering of little diamond-like patterns into it. A wool Indian serape or blanket was always used as a cover. The seat cushions had managed to lean to the middle from much use over many years. But when you lay down on it, your body is contorted enough to get comfortable. And either you use an old feather pillow or one of those hard-worn cushions for your head.

I’m too lazy to get a sweater so I just lay under a worn out cotton hand-made quilt and listen to the ticking of some clocks through the house. Either you hear the small hanging one in the kitchen, or the brown standing one that sits atop the wooden bookshelves full of old 5 and dime paperbacks and old books in the telephone room. Sometimes you can hear the windup clocks from the den or the dining room. The windup clocks had a different sound to them, especially when they would chime on the hour.

The brown clock was old or looked old and you could hear it winding itself up when it got ready to ring on the hour. And then you could hear the continuous tick-ticking, tick---tick---I guess it ticked at ever second intervals. Some days when you want to take an afternoon nap and really tired, you don’t notice the constant ticking. And then there were days you wish the thing would just stop! But, then when it does, you wonder what happened to the noisy clock a ticking away.

That’s what I’m remembering on this cool, wet, rainy Saturday afternoon as I lay still. Lying on my sofa, where the cushions have worn away except the tips that are set near the arms. Grandpa’s sofa didn’t have big arms, but they were rounded enough to help keep your head elevated with a pillow or cushion. The raindrops hitting the cemented front porch here to that living room with the TV at the Diamond R and into the sunroom that was newly built on the front of the farm pitter-pattered on that cemented front porch, step, and onto the old cemented sidewalk. It was like a rhythmical sound of rain and ticking of the brown clock. Most times it was off and out of sync, but who cared really, because you were at the farm and with the place you loved the most!

Sometimes, if you were able to get a good signal for the big television set that sat on the floor, because it was like built into a big wooden cabinet. You could watch an old show, or Big Valley or Rawhide. But, mostly, on Saturday afternoons and on into the evening, you either slept or watched the football games with your grandfather, your dad, or an uncle or two. Now, I’m not much of a sports fan, and many of those games were exciting enough to let me fall into a deep sleep. To be awakened by some snoring of someone else in the room that has fallen asleep too. Either in the white, leathery reclining chair or on the oversized chair that was the companion to the couch. It was always covered with a cottony, throw over it. And two small round pillow/cushions were in the seat too. And if you fell asleep in that chair, you either were quite slumped and had your legs bent at the knees still or stretched out in front of you.

Now, imagine hearing the ticking of a clock loudly, the plinking of rain outside on the cemented porch or hitting on the glass patio door or windows and men folk snoring, talk about an orchestra of sound! Sometimes it could be quite deafening and very annoying, especially if you’re all comfy and snug under a quilt, trying to get some shut eye yourself.

Looking back to those times, I can’t say I miss the annoyance, but I do miss those times. I miss grandpa and grandma, the aunts and uncles, cousins and family get-togethers there. And as I lie here in my own home, under my blanket on the sofa, I know what’s missing is that there’s no brown clock ticking loudly away in the quietness of the day.