Time moves on: Clock winds up in St. Louis
By William Janz Sentinel staff writer
Milwaukee Sentinel, July 10, 1992
St. Louis city officials were overjoyed to receive a jar of peanuts that
had no peanuts in it and a can of paint that had no paint in it.
That's according to Donald Burg, the Milwaukee man who made the shipment,
and received thousands of dollars for it. Burg, 74, is a widely known and
respected, slightly retired, very distinguished, longtime jeweler. You'd
trust him to sell you carats and stuff.
Asked to explain his recent transaction, Burg began his story by saying,
"My first meeting with the clock was 1951."
It's a clock St. Louis had forgotten was here. Burg couldn't forget it becuase
every Friday, for 35 years, he, or a colleague, had to take a crank and
wind that son of a gun.
This clock is not your average, run-of-the-mill, 700-pound clock. It is
a master pneumatic clock, which ran the Great Floral Clock that was the
centerpiece of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.
The floral clock was not quite the kind you'd fit in your kitchen: The minute
hand was 74 feet in length and weighed 2,500 pounds.
"Ten people could stand on the hands and it would still operate without
fluctuation." Burge said.
At night, at a time when many people did not have electricity, the floral
clock was illuminated by 1,000 lights.
So how'd the master clock that rant this baby end up in Milwaukee?
Well, there was this clock place in Milwaukee, Johnson Service Co., which
made the 112-foot diameter St. Louis floral clock and imported the paster
clock from German. Once a minute, the master clock released a puff of compressed
air strong enough to move a hand of the floral clock 5 feet, which designated
one monute.
After the fair, the big clock and its flowers died, and the master clock
was returned to Johnson Service, which later became Johnson Controls Inc.
The clock stayed in storage until 1938, when it was bought by a local jeweler.
A bunch of people in St. Louis -- The World's Fair
Society -- may produce another World's Fair but have started modestly
with an attempt to reproduce the floral clock. They searched for acouple
of years until they found the mezzanine on which were located Burg and his
master clock.
The clock became Burg's in 1958 when he and an associate bought the jewelry
store in which they worked. The store was Schmitter-Burg, and the clock
stood on the mezzanine outside the store in the Wells Building, 324 E. Wisconsin
Ave.
Recently, the St. Louis people paid $20,000 for the clock. With that kind
of maney involved, Burg couldn't just stick some postal stamps on it and
mail it.
"The clock had an interesting feature, a pendulum composed of two glass
vials of mercury," which contracted and expanded with changes in the
weather and kept the clock on time, Burg said. The vials weren't sealed,
so Burg was afraid sombody'd spill the mercury moving the clock, and you
know how hard it is to pick up mercury rolling around the floor. For appropriate
packing material, Burg went to Pill & Puff. And saw a glass jar full
of peanuts. He dispated with the peanuts in the usual manner, cleaned the
jar, and dumped in the mercury.
When St. was ready to receive its treasures recently, Burg put the peanut
jar inside an empty paint can, and encircled the jar with vermiculite, for
absorpsion, in case that pesky, darn stuff spilled out of the tightly sealed
peanut jar.
Although Burg sold his store to Treiber & Straub, he still works two
days a week at Treiber & Straub's store at Mayfair.
"I was thrilled that the clock went back to St. Louis, rather than
a private home or office or antique dealer," Burg said.
Burg has a grandfather clock at home, and every Sunday morning, when he
winds it, he thinks of the clock he wound for 35 years, this clock in St.
Louis that will go on and on and on. Clocks are scary that way. Time never
stops.
Unless you forget to wind it, of course.
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