"TIME'S UP FOR 'CLOCK MAN'"
Published in the Indianapolis Star (StarSouth), July 12, 2002 ©
As he steps off the bottom of the steep ladder inside the clock tower of the Johnson County Courthouse, Marion Henderson pauses just a few seconds to catch his breath and put his faded cap back on.
His face, deeply creased and as round as a wall clock, glistens with sweat from the July heat that is 90 degrees out on the courthouse square and 20-30 degrees hotter up in the loft where he has kept the county right on time for more than a quarter of a century.
He is accompanied by the heir to his time-keeping kingdom, a man barely half his age, Joe Ault, and the two have just made sure the hands on the four clock faces familiar to every motorist and pedestrian in the vicinity of the courthouse were in their proper places.
"We had to set the west face," Ault reports on their trip to the top of the 20-step ladder. "It was an hour slow."
Henderson, on the other hand, hasn't slowed down even that much, even though he rang in his 90th birthday earlier this year and claims he has already retired as keeper of the county's most visible timepiece.
"I'm 90 years old and getting to where I can't do things the way I used to," says
the man courthouse workers call "the clock man."
Still, here he is, on a summer afternoon in this preheated and naturally lighted oven of a clock tower, just as he always has been roughly once a week since 1976.
He and Ault next shuffle into the shed-shaped enclosure that houses the clockworks, where time has passed in the small, almost imperceptible motions of gears and chains for 12 decades.
The original pendulum system has been replaced with an electric motor, but the 121-year-old heart of the mechanical system that keeps the clock advancing still needs a good old-fashioned oiling down.
With a small oil can, its spout as long and narrow as an anteater's tongue, the two clock keepers squirt fresh lubrication onto the chains and gears, the excess oil heading in trickles toward the five silvery pie pans placed strategically on the floor beneath the clockworks.
"It won't lose a minute in a month," Henderson says admiringly of the timeless clock mechanism. "It keeps right on."
As they exit the shed, which is covered with the autographs of scores of curious visitors since 1894, the pair heads down the first of the three sets of stairs it takes to get back to the courthouse's third floor. They know the way by heart now and the places to duck their heads.
And they will be back soon.
Despite Henderson's supposed passing of the baton, they seem to still be running in tandem, a tag team still in the ring together.
"I think, as long as Marion can climb stairs, he'll be up there," Ault says, once they have reached a courthouse corridor.
Henderson, who started climbing up to the tower in 1976 after county officials asked him to revitalize the long-neglected clock, doesn't argue.
"I'll give him a hand anytime I can, I sure will," he says, tugging at the bill of his cap. "I'm glad to do it."
An amateur clock maker who worked at Allison Division in Indianapolis for 39 years before retiring in 1979, Henderson has watched over the county clock with tender, precise care all these years mostly for the satisfaction of it, not any financial reward.
"Money?" he asks, a chuckle striking a note in his steady voice like the hourly bell four stories above. "I don't get paid anything, never have, didn't expect anything."
"And I get paid half of what he makes," Ault adds, smiling and laughing in step with his mentor.
Ault, 46, shares Henderson's fascination with clocks and what makes them tick. The younger Franklin man, vice president of McGinn Tool and Engineering Co. in Franklin and a member of Franklin City Council, has been building his own clocks for a long time, too, including a grandfather clock he made back in high school.
"It still keeps pretty good time," he says, with an audible tick of pride.
Ault's role as protégé and successor to "the clock man" has taken place as orderly and timely as the sweep of a second hand. The company where Ault works has made repair parts for the courthouse clock for several years now. "It was kind of natural that he asked me to take over, because we were already somewhat familiar with the clock," Ault says.
Henderson didn't exactly have to ask twice, anymore than the county did when it asked him to become its clock man 26 years ago. "They asked me to do it, so I did," Henderson recalls, "just because I wanted to. I wanted to help them out."
The county probably can expect Henderson's help a while longer. It is still only a short bicycle ride from his home on Monroe Street to Franklin's centerpiece structure for the master clock keeper, who is a widower with two children and a grandchild.
Ault welcomes the help.
"I mean, he's the clock guy," Ault says, with a smile. "He knows everything about it."
"I wouldn't say he knows everything about it yet," Henderson then says, with a grandfatherly chuckle and good-natured nod toward his willing apprentice.
But Ault has 44 years to get up to his mentor's speed. "I'm hoping to have that thing in as good a shape as it is today," he forecasts, looking ahead as far as 2046.
"It'll be running; I may not be here to see it, but it'll be running," Henderson chimes in, his creased face showing an upturned smile like an old, reliable clock that still keeps pretty good time.
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