Tick, tock

RITZVILLE - It's all but impossible to walk into Harland and Marilyn Eastwood's home and not notice the constant tick-tock coming from every direction.

It's definitely impossible to miss the chorus of chimes toning every hour, half hour and some quarter hours.

After 45 years of repairing the timepieces, including seven years of semi-retirement, Harland Eastwood, soon to turn 69, is letting the clock wind down on his career.

He and his wife Marilyn owned Old Time Collector's Corner in Ritzville since 1997. It was a combination clock shop, repair shop and collectible shop.

Eastwood said it was important to incorporate both time and collectible elements in the business title.

When the couple closed the business seven years ago, Eastwood continued to repair clocks but in a smaller shop behind his home.

"I still enjoy it, but even with things you really love there comes a point where you don't want to do them anymore," he said. "It's not nearly the challenge or as much fun as it used to be."

Eastwood grew up with old clocks around the house in the Seattle area.

"My dad had a whole bunch of them," he said. "I like old things and things that work the way they were intended."

He's also found himself drawn to mechanical items: clocks, coins, bottles, pens and classic cars, to name a few.

So when it came to training for a career, Eastwood selected to study clock repair.

In his class of 27 from North Seattle Community College, most were more interested in watch repair. Only he and another man came to learn how to fix clocks.

"It was a dying art even back when I started," he said. "It's not a difficult trade to learn if you have the mechanical aptitude," he said. Think of training to be a jet pilot or a surgeon: most people have the capacity to learn the skills but not necessarily the aptitude.

"And I'd never be a surgeon," he said with a chuckle.

He and his wife operated Queen City Clock Shop from their McMicken Heights neighborhood home in the Seatac area for many years.

The business specialized in wholesale work with different clients in the area. At its height, the business was seeing up to 120 repairs monthly, particularly around the holidays which was always his busiest time of year.

"It's not all that hard, but you've got to know what you're doing," he said.

It's also a tricky business because you have to do the job right the first time and relatively quickly.

If you repair 10 clocks but eight come back to you, a profit cannot be made, he said. And if you do an absolutely perfect job but take forever, customers are going to be upset.

He also worked with department stores to hand deliver and construct grandfather clocks all over the Puget Sound region.

Clocks would have to be put together by a professional clock man otherwise the warranty would have been voided, Eastwood said. This work took him from Centralia to Blaine to the western edge of the Cascades mountains.

The couple moved to Ritzville in 1992 where they spent a year restoring their house, which his great-grandparents constructed in the early 1900s.

"It had been vacant for 30 years," he said. "The windows were all boarded up and we didn't have any electricity or running water."

Today it stands, filled to the brim with family heirlooms, home-built furniture and artwork - even his great-grandmother's clock that sits in the same place when she owned it.

Several of the clocks that Eastwood tried his hand in building in the 1970s hang on the walls. He said, while he enjoys them, he found the process too time-consuming.

And while it's nearly impossible to narrow down a favorite clock, he said the one's he has built cases for are pretty close to the top of the list.

"They do tend to be my favorites because they have more of me in them," he said.

Clocks often carry a sentimental value for those passed down through generations.

Eastwood said that the industry, though always sparse and with little competition, is seeing a bit of resurgence lately. There's a lot more emphasis on nostalgia nowadays, he said, and people are more and more seeking out pieces.

His advice on repairing them: Ask questions. Some repair shops looking to make a quick buck often just oil the clocks, which isn't as effective long-term.

"Ask them if they're going to take it apart and put it back together, or just oil it," he said.

On retirement, he said he'll mainly miss the people and customers he would interact with. While clock repair is technical and mechanical, he particularly enjoyed explaining the clock's history, where it was built and stories behind the clock.

The contents of his backyard shop, chock full of clock parts and repair tools, will likely be sold off. There are several other clock repairmen who would be interested in the items, he said.

Retirement, though, will give him time to pursue his other passions: writing, old cars, history and using his metal detector to track down old coins.

The history buff has already published more than a dozen books, and said he has a few more he wants to write before his time is up.

Marilyn pointed to a stack of books on the coffee table.

"That's them," she said, gesturing to the large pile of books. "That table's going to flip over one of these days."