[A small bowl of french onion soup, with a spoon holding back some of the top cheese layer to show the rich broth.]
This one’s only from last September! I think!
… okay, I thought it was First Friday, but apparently something else was happening last September, because these pics are actually from the 13th. Me & Loiosh wandered around downtown for a while, then stopped for a bite to eat.
[Loiosh, an orange tabby wearing a green harness, stands atop a restaurant menu, looking off to the right of the camera at pretty close range.]
& also drink.
[He’s drinking from a tall glass of ice water. His tongue is dipping down into the water, as is one black whisker.]
This awesome street clock has apparently been on Main Street since about a year before I took these pictures, but this is the first time I’d noticed it. Because I’m bad at this, apparently.
[The top of an forest-green post clock, which stands high above the sidewalk in Alamosa, Colorado. The clock face is white, and the decorative vane above it reads Alamosa in gold-filled letters.]
It’s called the Velhagen Clock, after the local jewelry business owned by the Velhagen brothers, Ewald & Edward. The brothers ordered the clock from the Seth Thomas Clock Company in 1911; it arrived in spring of 1912, & was installed on State Avenue.
Construction to widen State in the 1960s meant the clock had to come down, & might have been thrown away or recycled as scrap if a local machinist, John Davis, hadn’t offered to do all the pending sewer work in exchange for the clock.
The rest of the story is told in three articles in the Alamosa Citizen, which I highly recommend reading; there’s a lot more detail & a whoooole bunch of pictures.
The Velhagen Clock, Part One: The crown jewel of Alamosa gets a new shine
The Velhagen Clock, Part Two: A Fresh Coat
The Velhagen Clock, Part Three: In the sun at last
It’s SO BIG, lookit the thing!
[The clock rises eighteen feet above the sidewalk. The whole thing is painted a deep forest green; the base is rectangular, rising in tiers to a box that contains some of the mechanism; a column tops that, holding up the round clock face and the decorative vane at the top.]
I’m really glad it was saved from winding up as scrap or whatever, & that it’s been restored & put up again. I love this old stuff, the sturdy, properly-built things that will last forever with just a bit of work, & the more of it we manage to keep going, the better.
