When a severe thunderstorm knocked out power for a couple hours in Silverton in late June, it created a public nuisance that lasted for weeks and was only recently resolved.
The blackout caused the tower clock on the San Juan County Courthouse to fall a little over two hours behind. It remained that way until Norm Wuytens showed up in town in late July.
Wuytens is a member of the National Association of Watch and Clock Makers and for him it is simply unacceptable for a clock to display the wrong time — especially if it is a magnificent 100-year-old tower clock.
“I like to see clocks work,” he said during a recent meeting with the county commissioners. “You have got a very valuable time piece up there (atop the courthouse). It would mean so much more to visitors if it told the right time.”
So Wuytens, of Brawley, Calif., reset the clock for the county and while he was at it, he reset the chimes to ring in each hour from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. He also offered to train someone the county designates to reset the instrument come the next power outage.
“You’re making us an offer we can’t refuse,” said Commissioner Pete McKay.
The clock was installed in the courthouse the year the building was built, 1907. It was manufactured by the E. Howard Co. of Boston as a one-hour strike, weight-driven pendulum clock.
“With a tower clock company like E. Howard, you could go to one company and get everything you needed,” Wuytens said — the clock faces, bell and the works.
“There were dozens of manufacturers and this was one of the premier ones.”
Wuytens estimated only a few hundred clocks similar to the one atop the county courthouse were made. Wuytens also reset the clock last summer when it had again fallen way out of synch. 
Wuytens started collecting clocks “years ago,” he said, and since he couldn’t afford to have them repaird, “I decided I needed to learn to fix them.”
At some point in the past, the pendulum, weights and cables that originally drove the courthouse clock were replaced by an electric motor. The motor that is currently driving the clock was installed in 2001.
Wuytens would like to restore the clock to its original, pendulum-driven condition.
“I really want to do this,” Wuytens said. He figures a few small parts may be missing and he is already planning to track them down.
“I think it will take at least two full working days — or maybe two full days and nights — to put this thing back together,” Wuytens said.
Wuytens said the clock, if pendulum driven once again, would have to be wound once a week.
“It’s an 8-day clock. It is supposed to be wound weekly, but they give you an extra day.”
But some old maintenance notes in the small compartment housing the clock hints that there were good reasons for converting the clock from a pendulum to electricity.
A note dated Sept. 19, 1914 noted the clock had fallen 20 minutes behind in the six days since it was last rewound.
At any rate, Silvertonians finally have a courthouse clock that tells the right time again, and it even chimes properly thanks to Wuytens, who is only too happy to help out.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams I’d be able to work on something like this,” he said. “I’m having fun.”