Does Anybody Really Care? (About Time)

[austin_dern]

Long-memoried readers may recall a couple weeks ago I broke our atomic-clock-based wall clock, the one that uses time signals from WWV to adjust to the current time. The clock itself was and is fine, but the glass plate protecting the clock face from the elements was shattered into so many pieces. More than you're thinking of. More than that.

My father recommended that if there's a place in town that sells stained glass or art glass that they'd likely be able to cut a thin, eight-inch disc of glass. It happens there's a stained-glass/art-glass store so nearby it's even closer than the nearest convenience store. But I kept failing to actually check with them to see if they could do the work.

Today I finally got to doing something about it. But because of another errand, details of which I am not yet ready to make public, I got to the shop just before it closed. They were turning off the lights and everything, and I went back to the car but a guy waiting behind the shop said she'd gone back in, go talk to her.

So, wary that I had interrupted someone's departure-for-the-long-weekend, I entered and explained my need. Without saying a word she turned the clock upside-down, dropping yet another shard of glass out of it. Then took the clock over to a work table and did some measurements, and then back behind a counter. Finally she spoke: they can do that. She gave an estimate of about $20, extremely reasonable, and while it could have been done while I waited if I had gotten there earlier, now, I would have to wait. When could I come pick it up? Tuesday, unfortunately, I'm squeezed between office and pinball league, so we have to wait for Wednesday for the clock's return. (They're closed Monday for the holiday.) But they're going to cut a fresh piece of glass and install it and that seems to be everything we could hope for. Now I just have to stop instinctively looking for the time on the kitchen wall, the one surface in the house where it will definitely not be.

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You know where we definitely were, back in July last year? Kennywood. Here's photographic proof.

Jack Rabbit dispatched and making its way to the first drop, which thanks to the terrain-hugging track, is well before the lift hill.

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And there's the station. They've got LEDs providing the light of the stars now but at least preserved the shape and color of the neon.

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Jack Rabbit's centennial logo, with the nice long ears for the K.

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The new National Historic District sign doesn't have that post-facto correction about when the coaster opened on it. For what it's worth the Roller Coaster Database does think Jack Rabbit's double-dip ``camelback loop'' is a unique feature although ... boy, it sure seems like 'two hills in a row' would be an obvious feature for any terrain coaster.

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View from just outside Jack Rabbit of the Racer and, above it, the Steel Curtain scenery.

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Racer's new National Historic District sign has been modified to reflect the loss of Montaña Rusa at La Feria Chapultepec. And avoids any allusion to Blackwood's Grand National.

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Trivia: In France in 1907 Wilbur Wright --- maybe souring from the bad progress of contract talks --- wrote his sister Katherine that the Notre Dame cathedral ``was rather disappointing as most sights are to me. The nave is seemingly not much wider than a store room and the windows of the clerestory are so awfully high up that the building is very dark'', and after visiting the Louvre, judged ``the Mona Lisa is no better than the prints in black and white''. Source: First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane, T A Heppenheimer.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

Comments

[armiphlage]

That does seem reasonable for custom-cut glass.