Dad had been sleeping off and on and everybody had left for the evening but me. A few minutes before the staff was going to put him to bed, he woke up and heard the clock in the picture struck. He asked me if I knew the story behind the clock and the shelf. I told him that I didn't, but that I was interested. He proceeded to tell me the following story.
Both the clock and the shelf were wedding presents to my dad's parents in 1912. Dad and his dad were in the barn on the farm near Scranton, KS one day in the 1950s. (I know it was the 1950s because Dad said he was living in McPherson at the time.) Dad saw the shelf in a stall in the barn along with a calf; it must have been there for a while because it was quite dirty. He asked his dad if he wanted and was told no, you can take if you want it. So dad took it home and cleaned it up. The high school had a wood refinishing class which he took and refinished it. Nothing has been done to it since.
He told me a similar story about a coffee grinder. Dad's grandma had tossed it on a pile of junk in the back yard. He said he wanted it and his mother said she would alve it for him the next time he came back. He did get it the next time he visited. He refinished it in another class at the High School. He replaced the front to the drawer where the coffee drops because a mouse had chewed a hole through it. He regrets doing that now because it takes away the memories.
A note about the clock. We recently put an electrical movement in the clock so it didn't have to be wound. I kept the parts so it can be restored to its original state sometime in the future.
