The Rebel Cuckoo Clock

I love the cuckoo clock, I bought for Rick several years ago, and not just because it reflects our national heritage.

The carving is lovely, the animals are adorable. The people on the balcony well dressed. Maybe the farmer sawing wood gets tired. Songs played on the hour are melodious.

However, the clock is a rebel.

At night it stops cuckooing which is lovely, but in the morning it wakes up at different times, mostly at 8 a.m. There days it gets up early and goes off at 7 a.m. which is five minutes before the church bells ring 35x from the church tower down the street. The latest it has started (probably wanted to sleep in) is 9. At night it may shut off anywhere from 8 p.m.to 10. 

I'm still arguing about the number of cuckoos. Rick says the double cuckoos are echos but each cuckoo has echo so for three o'clock we get cuckoo echo, cuckoo echo, cuckoo echo, cuckoo echo, cuckoo echo,  instead of cuckoo echo, cuckoo echo, cuckoo echo before the melody starts.

The Swiss tend not to be a rule-following people, something that can be very refreshing. For example when Rick and I applied to be married in our 70s, we had to tell the registry what we would name our future children. We did have many choices, though: my name, his name, a combination of our names with either Adams or Nelson going first.

It wasn't totally wasted though. Our dog reflected our name decision He's Sherlock Adams-Nelson on his papers. Unlike the clock he doesn't have any song after he barks.

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the top stories about the airline industry. He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.  

 

Note: The first cuckoo clock was most likely created in the 1600s in Dresdenm Gernaby.

Visit: https://dlnelsonwriter.com