An old clock and some memories

Top left, the clock which was headed for the trash. Top right, working on placing the images. Bottom picture, A glimpse at Times Past proudly sits on my mantle along with one of my many antique cameras. Photo by Megan P. 

A few weeks ago I took an old clock that was about to be thrown away and decided that I could make something creative with it.
Now, I know you may be thinking how strange is she, but trust me, it turned out better than even I could imagine.
For weeks I would look at that old clock lying on the kitchen table, or in my house the “catch-all”. What could I do to turn an ordinary old clock into something I would actually display?
My mom, Sheila, actually put me on the right path. She said, “What about the Times Past that you type in the paper?”
GENIUS! Get it? Times Past, a clock... Anyways. So I grabbed the screwdriver and began to take the clock apart.
I grabbed some papers I had around the house and cut out page 5 and begin to figure out just how I was going to make it work.
Once I had the background figured out, I knew that I wanted to make this special and I knew exactly what else I wanted to place on the clock.
Growing up my grandfather, better known as Rabbit Tipton, loved reading the newspaper. He would read all the local papers from surrounding counties and I don’t think he ever missed an issue of the Lexington paper.
Poppy, as I called him, would save the papers he collected over the week and place them in his old army chest in “the cat house” (an old building he had out back where the cats would sleep in the winter time). When we would go visit them on the weekends he would tell me to go read this article from the paper, or “there’s a good one in there this week”.
I loved to go up and rummage around in that old army chest. Stories and articles and the comics of course. As I got older he began saving me newspapers he thought would mean something to me. I still have a lot of those papers stored at my house, and when I begin to miss my Poppy, I go through them and read a few articles that I remember him pointing out.
But anyways, back to the clock. So, since my Poppy first lead me down the path to my love for the newspaper, I decided I would make my ‘Times Past’ in memory of him and that’s just exactly what I did. I had some copies of old pictures of him, his military picture and one of him with an old car while on the military base. I cut them out and added them to the clock.
And, since you never saw Rabbit with Mary, I had to add my Granny and her sisters on there as well.
My clock now sits on my mantle at home and is a reminder of “Times Past”. When I look at it, I am reminded of a saying  I came across a few years ago and it makes me love my family and my memories even more.

Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. “Be still” they say. “Watch and listen. You are the result of the LOVE of THOUSANDS.”