Winder Loves Clock, Pinup Beauties

Two hundred and fifty long steps above the vaulted vestibule of Memorial Hall, perched among the innumerable beams and cables of the inside of the tower, is a small shack papered with ancient Varga calendars.

"Got to have sompin to keep your mind on when you're up here crankin," says Jimmy Dyke, who has been coming up to the shack to wind the Mem Hall clock every week for the last 18 years.

To reach the shack Jimmy has to pled up seemingly endless staircases and tread through cold, deserted rooms with thin, gothic, stained-glass windows.

"First year or two I wound the old gal they used to have waitresses sleeping up in them rooms," Jimmy claims. (At that time Mem Hall was a refectory.)

Eager

"Really sorta looked forward to going up in those days," Jimmy says. "I always knocked, of course," before entering the waitresses' rooms, he admits.

The inside of the actual tower up above the bleak rooms resembles the set for an old Douglas Fairbanks classic. Jimmy has to poke his way gingerly along the shaky scaffordings and on the creaky stairs.

"Stairs broke down once 14 years ago," Jimmy relates. "But they're O.K. now." One fight above the partly open area of the bell tower stands the widow's walk, strewn with dead pigeons.

"You know all the fuss they made about that owl," says Jim insignantly. "Well these damn hawks we got up here kill twice as many birds, and have you ever seen anyone go after them?"

The shack in which the clock mechanism is located sits behind the four wed known gold and black faces.

Jimmy loves the satsy shafts and wheels of the mechanism. His face glows when he talks about "her."

"She's been here since 1897 and we never had any real trouble with her," he says. "Course they had to rebore some of the wheels back in '38. Stopped her for a week then. Old lady down on Summer Street called. Said she couldn't live without the clock, but guess she managed all right."

Heavyweights

Jimmy can discourse for hours on how "she" works. A 14-foot pendulum and two weights keep her going. Each week Jimmy cranks up the weights, which weigh 1500 and 1000 pounds. The operation takes about an hour.

The 1500 pound weight hangs up above the shack, according to Jimmy. "She broke once about 14 years ago--came right on through the roof, but I ducked," Jimmy relates.

After cranking the two weights up, a job he describes as "good exercise even for an old fells," Jimmy walks over to the April, 1940 Varga on which he keeps his oiling schedule.

He pauses a long time before April, a nude blonde with a telephone curled up on a sofa. "Kinda cute, don't you think?" he asks.