The Happy Horologist

By James MacPherson Associated Press Writer, Associated Press

Published Friday, April 07, 2006, Glen Ullin, N.D.

Ken Muggli can do without co-workers and workplace chatter. He only wants to hear the sound of a clock.

"I'm not interested in a chatty environment," Muggli said. "The tick-tock - I can't think of a more comforting, soothing sound. I think it goes back to the womb, listening to mother's heartbeat."

There was a time Muggli thought he could never return to his hometown to make a living repairing clocks. So he went to Seattle, where he inspected thousands of precision airplane parts.

Now, thanks to the Internet and dependable delivery services, Muggli, 58, is able to practice horology - the science or art of measuring time or making timepieces - in a tidy shop in the basement of his home on this city's Main Street.

People from across the country send their clocks to Muggli's Dakota Clock Repair, and only a percentage of the work comes from North Dakota. He also sells clock parts.

"Essentially, I'm as big as I want to be," said Muggli, a large, bespectacled man who favors colorful suspenders.

Glen Ullin has had two other clock repairmen in the last century, one of whom was Muggli's late uncle, who gave him the clock bug. He says his Swiss ancestry probably has something to do with his love of clocks.

"I've always had an interest in clocks," Muggli said. "I've always liked fine, precision things that work well."

Muggli left Glen Ullin in the 1960s for Seattle, where he landed a job as a quality assurance engineer at the Boeing Co. His job there complemented his passion for clocks.

"I investigated the cause of production problems, and what could be done to resolve them," Muggli said. "The work was very detailed and investigative in nature."

Four years ago, he retired from Boeing and moved back to the Morton County town of about 860.

"I came back because I wanted a slower pace of life and, of course, I found it here," Muggli said.

His wife, Kathy, who's originally from Glendive, Mont., also was eager to move from the Seattle area, where she was fed up with the traffic and the rain. "Too many people," Kathy Muggli said of Seattle. "And we get sunshine here."

Nearly every town in North Dakota and elsewhere once had a horologist, Muggli said. Electric clocks that were more accurate, cheaper, and less finicky made the mechanical clock near obsolete.

"These old clocks require participation by the owner," Muggli said of mechanical wind-up clocks. "You just don't put a battery in them and come back in a year."

Mechanical clocks are making a comeback, said Jim Bland, a spokesman for the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors in Columbia, Pa. A growing interest in antiques and the online auction site eBay Inc. has resurrected the mechanical clock, he said.

"They are not the buggy whip," he said. "They are machines, and like all machines, if they are properly lubricated and properly cared for, they will work almost indefinitely."

Bland said his organization has 25,000 watch and clock collectors. The organization also has a horology school, which has graduated about 600 horologists in the past decade.

"People with the skills are dying off, and other factors has created a demand," Bland said.

Horology is a dying art, Muggli said, and it's not for everyone. "It takes good eyes, steady hands, and the ability to be content to work by your self," he said.

Muggli mostly works on grandfather clocks, wall clocks, and mantle clocks. He will only perform a complete clock overhaul, which can cost several hundred dollars, depending on the clock.

Most clocks take at least a day to take apart, clean, oil, replace parts and reassemble, using tiny clock-specific tools.

Muggli said he's been able to fix every clock that has come into his shop.

"Every clock is a whole little bundle of challenges," Muggli said. "Very few are the same." A clock overhaul should be good for at least 25 years, he said.

"My goal is to never see that customer again, unless they bring me another clock," Muggli said.

He said he works a full eight-hour day, but the shift can be spread out throughout the day.

"When my neck gets stiff, I quit working," Muggli said. "And my neck gets stiff quite often."

He will not work on watches or cuckoo clocks. "I can't make any money on cuckoo clocks," Muggli said. "The work it takes is more than the value of the clock."

Many of Muggli's customers are more than 75 years old, looking to pass clocks on to other family members after they die, he said. "They're setting things in order," Muggli said. "They see it as a valuable heirloom, maybe not in dollars, but sentimentally."

Those who receive the clocks "see it as an embodiment of a loved one," he said.

Muggli's skill as a horologist is evident with his own collection of clocks positioned throughout his home. Those dozen or so clocks - some more than a century old - are synchronized to the second. Each sounds off with different chimes exactly on the hour.

"We always know what time it is," Kathy Muggli said.