Timing is important for climbing Clocktower
It’s been said that time stands still in Spokane. So on the first day of spring I climbed the Riverfront Park Clocktower to learn why.
The clock in our famous tower has been deader than Bing Crosby since January.
A broken pulley sent 400 pounds of counterweights crashing through sections of the tower’s wooden floor.
A couple weeks later a quartet of beer-fueled vandals compounded the problem.
They tore open the tower’s heavy iron door and ran amok. Doug Schwab, Riverfront Park’s facilities and maintenance foreman, said the jerks destroyed lights, spray-painted names and bent a critical piece of clock mechanism.
Police caught the culprits close to the scene. At least a couple of them (Schwab isn’t sure how many) tried to get away on one of the park’s underpowered golf carts.
But is a stalled clock really so terrible?
Even in its current dysfunctional condition, our city timepiece is right twice a day, which is better than the rest of Spokane’s government.
Even so, I’ve always had a desire to check out the Clocktower. So on a glorious Monday morning I met Schwab at the brick tower’s massive base.
Few know this structure better than Schwab. The 52-year-old winds the ancient mainspring once a week when the clock is ticking. Getting to the top takes “about 100 steps,” he warned.
The 155-foot Clocktower was built in 1902 as part of the Great Northern Railroad Station. Everything but the tower was demolished to make way for Expo ‘74.
The tower’s poorly lighted insides have become a condominium for half the spiders in the county.
The gloomy interior would be a terrific setting to film a horror movie. The joker who hung a plastic skeleton on a door handle must have thought so, too.
I have a confession to make. I am afraid of heights.
This is an unacceptable condition since the Clocktower is elevator impaired. Ascending the first two floors takes scaling vertical iron ladders bolted to the walls.
I’d rather play with the spiders.
On the third floor is a side door that opens to a small closet. Veteran parks employees have been known to lurk in this dark space and initiate hapless new employees with a good old-fashioned scare.
No deaths have been reported – yet.
Two flights of steep-angled wooden stairs take you to the fifth floor, where the mechanics sit in the center of the room. It runs like a giant grandfather clock. A hundred turns of a hand crank keeps the pendulum swinging for about eight days.
Amazingly, after 104 years the clock keeps good time, added Schwab.
And here’s good news. Repairs will soon be finished. The clock should be running again by the end of the month.
Climbing one last gut-churning iron ladder took me through a trap door and onto the open-air observation floor. The panoramic view of Spokane was fabulous.
The walls of the top two levels are tattooed with autographs and initials left by hundreds of visitors.
H.G.T. signed on Aug. 28, 1913. L.E. Maly, a stonemason, made his mark on 11-14-74.
President Jimmy Carter visited the park in 1978. Some of his protectors climbed the Clocktower and left their initials under a drawing of a peanut. Carter, of course, was a peanut farmer.
Before heading back down, Schwab looked for autographs that President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon’s staff left when he opened Expo ‘74. “But I think it’s under this piece of wood,” added Schwab, pointing to a newly nailed board.
A cover-up. Yep. Sounds like Nixon.