House Of Clocks
BUYING FROM "SMALL BUSINESS" HAS NEVER MEANT SO MUCH! WE CELEBRATED 53 YEARS SEPTEMBER 2023!
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WE ARE CURRENTLY OPEN:
MONDAY-SATURDAY: 10AM-4PM
SUNDAY: 12PM-3PM
(we do not do watch repair)
History
House of Clocks History
"Repairing the Past for the Future"
It started with a Gustav Becker clock, made in Germany, Marie and Joe Hohn came across hanging in Marie's ancestral home in 1954. It now proudly hangs in our store!
The Tale of a Clock
This is a story that may have no end. How do you end a story of a clock that just seems to go on and on forever? It hasn’t run without interruption, but it has been in one family line for many generations and has lent itself well to restoration. This is also the story of a clock that began a family business that, so far, includes two generations.
This story begins in 1944 when Joe Hohn went into the United States Army. Joe was from northern Minnesota and of German heritage. Because he could speak the German language, he was put into the refugee program, to serve in Germany. That was his first tour with the Army. When he returned, he was sent to Camp Carson in Colorado Springs. Marie Hoffmann was working for the Army there. That’s how she and Joe met. Then Joe was sent to Korea. When he returned, he and Marie were married, in 1952. From there they were sent to Camp Atterbury in Indiana. Marie worked in Army finance there until Joe received orders to go to Nuremberg, back to Germany.
Nuremberg was still bombed out and there weren’t many quarters for dependents, but after a while Joe was able to find an apartment for them and Marie sailed over to join him. Joe was in ordinance still, but also working with the refugee program.
“I landed in Rotterdam and had to take a train to Nuremberg. I knew just a bit of German, but not nearly as much as Joe did. Sometimes I don’t know how I did it. At first we lived with this German Frau and finally were able to get quarters out in a little town called Eibach. We were housed in one of two buildings that had been German SS quarters. I loved it there. I had a garden, but I didn’t really have much to do there and I went to work for the Army in special activities, in motion picture service. They had charge of all the theaters, in North Africa, the embassies, all around,” Marie reminisced.
“We took a leave in 1954 to go to Luxemburg. I had promised my dad I would visit where his father was born. I still had relatives there and one cousin took us all over the country. We went out to this little village to see the home place. That part of the family had all immigrated to the United States. A woman who lived next door had bought the property. My great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents had owned the property. It was an old stone house with the stable and everything under one roof. But in earlier times the farmers would go into the villages at night for protection and come out to the farms in the daytime to work.
“The woman who owned it when we went there took us through the house and told us that if there was anything there we wanted, to “take it; it’s yours.” She was storing hay and grain in it. She had never lived in it. She pointed out a clock on the wall and said, “That clock was hanging there when I bought the place (50-60) years before). It’s yours. You have to take it,” Marie laughed.
“But we didn’t want it then,” Marie continued. “In those low countries where it’s so damp and cold, and in that old stone building with no heat, you can imagine what kind of condition it was in. The veneer back was in curls and the springs were gobs of rust, but we ended up taking it and Joe put it in the trunk of the car.
“It was a Gustav Becker clock, made in Germany. Becker was a very prolific clock maker and his clocks were everywhere. He made them in Freiburg, Silesia, not the Black Forest Silesia, the Upper Silesia. His company was bombed out in World War I and never rebuilt. His inventory that was left was sold to another firm called Junghans."
Joe and Marie’s first child, a son named Marty, was born in 1955 while they were in Germany. Marie said that the Army needed help so badly that she went back to work a month after Marty’s birth. In the meantime, the clock continued to ride around in the trunk of the car. Finally, one day in Eibach, Joe decided to go golfing. When he started to put his golf clubs in the trunk, it started to rain. But there was the clock. He had forgotten all about it and decided then and there that he would do something with it.
The first thing he did was to take out the movement and put it in kerosene, an accepted way of cleaning movements at that time. Joe and Marie have a son named Steve who works in the business. He explained that kerosene is no longer used for that because there are commercial cleaners that do a better job and don’t make the works look dull.
Joe took off the backboard that was all curled up, placed it on one of their marble windowsills and placed another piece of marble on top. But it was in pieces and he put it all back together like a jigsaw puzzle. The clock was missing a large top piece. The Hohns decided not to replace it, since they weren’t able to find one like the original.
They made a trip back to the old farm in 1955 to remove an “H” from above the door of the house. Because of the way it looked, they thought it was corroded metal. But it had been “H” for Hoffmann and could also be “H” for Hohn. It would represent both families. They had kept it in the old brown paper it had been wrapped in when they took it down until recently. Their son Marty is a cabinetmaker in Sacramento. He does very fine work and made a frame for the “H." A red velvet background sets off the ashy look of the letter that turned out to be wood so aged and delicate that it was left in the state in which it was found. It is proudly hanging in the store!
Chuck is also in the family business. After being in Stockton for 35 years, he has consolidated back to the Lodi store with his wife, Sandy, and his brother, Steve. Both Marie and Joe lived wonderful lives each to the age of 89! Sandy, Chuck, and Steve proudly carry on “the family business” today. The clock that got it all started hangs on the wall in the shop and we invite you to come in and see our piece of history!