The Clock on the Wall

I played outside plenty as a kid, both at my grandparents' house and my own.  I probably spent as much (maybe more) time at my grandparents' as I did my own home until I was 10 or 11 years old, much of it out in the yard and in the sunshine, but a good bit of it as well hanging out in front of one of the TVs in the den or the living room.

The living room, with the black and white TV, is where I and/or my youngest aunt were banished to whenever we wanted to watch something besides what my grandmother or grandfather were watching, usually in the evenings.  The color TV in the den, at the back of the house, was usually up for grabs during the day, except for during the week when my grandmother's soaps were on in the afternoon, or Sundays when my grandfather watched golf.

I owned that color TV on Saturday mornings.  Most Friday nights I spent at my grandparents' house, and plenty of Saturday nights as well, but almost every single Friday night until I got older, there I was.  It was the same routine pretty much every Saturday morning.  I'd bound out of bed and into the kitchen, make my request for whatever I wanted for breakfast that day - oatmeal, waffles, French toast, grits, pancakes, cereal, whatever - and deposit myself in front of the color TV in the den to spend the morning through early afternoon watching Saturday morning cartoons, The Monkees, and American Bandstand.

I spent so many years and so much time in that den, I remember every single detail about it from the furniture to the paneling on the walls, what color squares were next to what other color squares in the floor, how many windows there were, what books sat on the bookshelf against the wall - everything - but probably nothing more clearly recalled than the clock that sat high on the wall across from the two main chairs in the den.  There was a couch in the den as well, but the chairs were my grandparents' chairs - she had her own, he had his own.  I spent most of my time in my grandmother's chair, and that clock was directly across from it.

It was a simple clock - dark, looked like it was made of wood but was probably some kind of hard Fifties or Sixties-era plastic, with Roman numerals on the fact and gold-plated hands.  Nothing fancy and really kind of nondescript.

I watched that clock for so many different reasons over the years.  In early years, it was the clock by which I learned to tell time.  Annually, it became the clock I'd be eyeing waiting for midnight to come on Christmas Eve, because everybody knew Santa wouldn't come until after midnight.  During my dictatorship over Saturday mornings with the color TV, I'd glance at it to see what time it was - whether it was time for the Pink Panther, The Monkees' reruns, Bandstand, whatever.

I'm not sure why the memory of my grandparents' den and that clock, and my grandparents and their house in general, are now so tied to Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy" for me.  I'm sure I heard it often in the early Seventies in that house - my youngest aunt was a teenager at the time, so rock and pop music shows were often on either of the televisions and the radios in the house - I'm sure I heard it a number of times, and I vaguely recall watching some music program in the daytime where he was either on there singing it, or it was just being played.

But I hear it, and I'm transported back to my grandparents' den in the daytime, and that clock always ticking up high on the paneled wall.  I'm not sure where that clock has ended up, if it's even still around at all - possibly at my aunt's or my uncle's.

It's a bittersweet memory.  My grandfather's been gone a long time, my grandmother only a few years and I am still having kind of a hard time dealing with her being gone.  I haven't set foot in that house since probably 1983 or 1984.  And "It Don't Come Easy" is one of my all-time very favorite songs, probably, but it's attached to this memory that is both wonderful and painful, and now it seems I always shed a tear or two (or more) when I hear it.