Time to Be Fixed : Volunteers Take Care of Clocks That Tick People Off

Something was messing with the old church clock.

As far back as anyone remembered, neighbors in Pasadena and nearby Highland Park knew they couldn’t set their watches by the temperamental outdoor Church of the Angels clock, built in 1889. Sometimes it chimed the hours; sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it kept time; sometimes it didn’t.

But the clock was a majestic piece of work, set in a 44-foot-high sandstone tower, and as much a part of the tradition and pageantry of the church as the brass family nameplates on the pews, the original pipe organ and the lectern carved from a single piece of oak more than 400 years ago.

And after decades of problem-plagued operations, the clock has been running regularly again in recent years, a testament to the efforts of a dogged church neighbor and loving volunteers from the Santa Anita chapter of the National Assn. of Watch and Clock Collectors. The club took on two major renovations of the church’s clock as part of its volunteer efforts to keep old timepieces running in the San Gabriel Valley.

“It says something about the creativity that God gives human beings to keep such beautiful things working,” said the Rev. Robert J. Gaestel, the church’s vicar.

The clock, he said, gives people a sense of history, the way the church does, with its red brick walls and redwood ceiling.

“It’s just part of the whole fabric,” Gaestel said. “I like to listen to it (chime) when I wake up in the morning.”

For years, the chimes were silent, and the clock hands immobile, said Pat Miele, who has lived across the street from the church for 33 years.

“On and off . . . you’d hear it chiming. ‘Oh, the clock’s working.’ Then you wouldn’t hear it for weeks at a time.”

A neighbor who was a parishioner at the church asked Miele to take a look at the clock. The 56-year-old automotive machinist said sure; he was good with old things. But Miele was stumped.

“I tried to figure out why it ran and stopped and ran and stopped,” he said. “After messing with it, I could see there’s nothing wrong with it.”

The culprit? Pigeons.

The birds built their nest in the belfry and then roosted on the clock hands on the upstroke: That tipped the balance of the weight-driven clock and made it stop.

Miele and the church’s gardeners got rid of the birds by using BB guns and other methods. And after cleaning and oiling, the clock was running again.

The clock club first got involved in the project to clean and restore the clock in 1987, while the church was going through an earthquake renovation. A team of seven volunteers dismantled the clock and reassembled it in a yearlong project. In 1991, club volunteers dismantled the clock again to repair damage that was done during a construction project at the church. Every week since then, volunteers return to the clock to keep it oiled and cleaned.

Volunteers keep the clock ticking and chiming the old-fashioned way--by the swing of a 135-pound brass pendulum ball--and without one of those newfangled electric motors.

Les Lesovsky and 214 other local members of the watch and clock collectors club are unpaid volunteer keepers of old clocks in the San Gabriel Valley. Club members, who meet monthly, study horology (the art of measuring time or making timepieces) and trade or sell watches and clocks, said Scott Van Sant, the club’s president. The club also takes on public clocks when they break down and no one else can figure out how to fix them.

“It’s part of preserving our culture, our heritage,” said Van Sant, 62, a retired IBM salesman.

On a recent morning, Lesovsky and Van Sant ducked under the church’s arched doorways and climbed the 33 steps to the clock’s belfry. When club members first started work on the clock, its steel mechanisms were white with pigeon droppings. Now they are bright green and black.

The clock club also takes on smaller projects. In December, club members tinkered with the insides of Alhambra’s street clock and got it running for the first time in two years, much to the delight of downtown merchants and shoppers who want to set their watches by it.

“When it was broken, I got a lot of complaints,” said Alla Plotnikova, a sales assistant at Pedrini Music Store on downtown’s Main Street. “Everybody loves it.”

Alhambra’s street clock is on the palm-tree-lined Main Street, at Garfield Avenue. The clock keeps time in the heart of downtown’s hodgepodge of old brick storefronts and shiny new redevelopment projects, everything from Terry’s Wigs to East L.A. Tacos.

Jeweler Harry E. Wellman erected the clock 80 years ago, and, after changing hands several times, the clock was dedicated to the city of Alhambra in 1982. The 12-foot-high clock has a taupe Greek column pedestal design, and its opal glass front is lit from inside, so shoppers can see the Roman numerals at night.

The clock used to need winding with a key every eight days, when street clocks were common fixtures in most downtowns. There’s an automatic winding mechanism now, but Lesovsky still checks the clock every week to make sure it’s on time. Lesovsky, who wears a Seiko quartz wrist watch because of its accuracy, checks the Alhambra clock against his watch, which he sets by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the nation’s measurement laboratory.

“People depend on it,” he said.