March 31, 1999
Time and timing make him tick
By Garret Leiva
Herald staff writer
In Charlie Hilton's hands, hours can pass like minutes. Under his guidance the hands of time can be turned back or sped ahead. The Long Lake Township resident can even make time stand still - usually because his mother-in-law can't sleep with all the persistent ticking.
Like most curious youngsters, Hilton was overwhelmed with a desire to know how things worked; to find out what made them tick.
"Ever since I was a young boy, I've been interested in how things worked. I would go to sales and buy clocks for a quarter or fifty-cents and then tear them apart," said Hilton, who has repaired and restored hundreds of clocks in his small basement workshop filled with drawers of bearings and bushings and gear mechanisms.
Several decades later, the owner of Charlie's Clocks and Repairs remains inquisitive as ever.
Stepping inside Hilton's home it only takes a few seconds to know this man is passionate about time - the ticktock of more than 30 clocks being the obvious indicator. Adorning the walls and assorted furniture pieces, the collection stretches from room-to-room throughout the two-story house.
Regulators, mantel and parlor clocks, banjo and school house clocks - even beehive clocks, Hilton knows the unique story behind each of these mass-produced time pieces: There is the gingerbread clock in the kitchen that once housed a statue of the Virgin Mary instead of a pendulum. The banjo clock in the living room plucked from a granary in Connecticut and on the opposite wall a regulator rescued from a barn near Petoskey.
Other favorites include the large regulator clock that nearly became a medicine cabinet and the mantel clock given to his mother by the family she kept house for when she was 14-years-old.
All which he spends part of each Sunday morning winding and resetting - except the Seth Thomas regulator and Mission-style clock that remain stoically silent in the guest bedroom. "When my mother-in-law stays over the ticking bothers her," noted Hilton, who, along with his wife Cheryl, only notices the clocks when they don't chime up.
Working with time is equally important to Hilton. A self-taught clock repairer and restorer, the retired Air Force serviceman has serviced hundreds of clocks for clients throughout Michigan. Dealing with dials and gears that require magnification to see, clock repair requires ultra-sonic cleaning techniques, triple chime tuning and plenty of patience and perseverance.
"Sometimes you think it is going to be a piece of cake and then you take apart the clock and find a broken gear. What you think is going to be simple usually ends up the hardest job," noted Hilton, who learned the repair trade by reading books and "picking the brain" of a formally trained horologist.
"Sometimes I'll start over if I'm not satisfied with the timing. If the ticking is not on an even beat then the clock won't keep good time."
Many times, however, it is not the repair Hilton recalls but the customers. Like the Traverse City man who once brought in a Seth Thomas regulator to be fixed. Hilton inquired about the red oak clock and was told that it had once hung on a wall at the State Hospital.
"The man was an electrician and he said that when they closed the hospital every cottage had one of these clocks in it and they took them all out to the dumpster and were told to smash them," Hilton said. "Luckily, he was able to save one for himself."
After all these years, however, figuring out just how things tick remains Hilton's greatest pursuit. Cheryl, who shares space in the basement with her art studio, noted that time is of the essence for her husband - even if it means skipping a few meals.
"He doesn't even have time to have lunch. He doesn't have time to sit down," she joked. "At night he's thinking about tomorrow's work planing out every minute, every second of the day."