Golden Men with Hammers

Golden Men with Hammers

Noel Laflin

10-20-15

Friends pitched in together some twenty years ago and bought me a birthday gift that I’d had my eye on for quite some time. It’s one of those Small World Rhythm clocks that dings, and chimes, and does a few other tricks.  At the top of each hour, an upbeat ditty plays as four little golden men – all decked out in top hats and fancy old fashioned garb - start the process by rising on individual pedestals. With tiny hammers in hand, the boys then strike bells that light up, as they keep rhythm with a familiar classical tune.  The bells continue to light as the little men then sound out the hour with their tiny hammers.  When it’s all over, the pedestals descend back into place – as the little ditty plays again - and the golden gentlemen patiently wait to do it all over again at the top of the next hour, all the while keeping a firm grasp on those tiny hammers.

So, precisely at six each morning, if the illumination is bright enough to activate the clock’s light sensor, a Mozart serenade rings in the day.  An hour later, a thirty-second tidbit from Mr. Pachelbel’s Canon chimes in.  A ballet piece dances in at eight. Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,’ stirs the soul at nine, only to be followed by Haydn’s ‘Deutschlandied’ at ten.   The eleven o’clock chiming of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons tells me that the morning is drawing to a close.

Then the procession begins anew with Mozart kicking off the noon hour, Pachelbel announcing one o’clock, a ballet dance at two, etc.  This continues well nigh into the afternoon and throughout the evening - up until when all the lights upstairs are eventually extinguished, I go to bed, and the little men can finally catch a break from all of that rising and hammering of the bells.

I did some calculations just now.  It seems those guys have risen to the task of bringing in lovely tunes nearly one hundred seventeen-thousand times over the last two decades.

They have me beat, when it comes to rising each day for that same period of time, by a factor of about one hundred and fifty percent.  And I never go to bed with a hammer in hand, let alone rise with a classical tune in my head.

I feel like such a slacker at times like this.

I should never have done the math.

As it is, I think I will just sit here and wait for the next tune to play, then turn off the lights and let the guys get some rest.