NORWICH — As a child in the 1960s and ’70s, Charlie Dean would gaze across Main Street to Dan & Whit’s when he wanted to know what time it was. The glowing neon Budd’s Beverages clock hanging on the store’s second story would let him know.
From his house across the street, now home to Carpenter and Main and other businesses, he could see the clock from his bedroom window. It’s where he learned to read a clock face, and it also served as a nightlight.
“For 14 years, it was the only clock I had in my bedroom,” Dean said in a phone interview Friday.
In the decades since, the 1950s-era neon clock, likely given to the general store as a promotional item for the Newport, N.H.-based bottling company’s drinks, fell into disrepair. (Budd’s has since gone out of business.)
While the clock still told time, the second hand was no longer in place, and the neon did not glow. The marquee that displayed the company’s name in bold red lettering had faded.
So after Dean, a resident of Shrewsbury, Mass., noticed the state of the clock when he was visiting his parents in Norwich last November, he approached Dan Fraser, co-owner of Dan & Whit’s, and asked if he could restore it.
“It was always sort of part of the storefront,” Fraser said in a phone interview on Thursday.
Dean brought the clock home with him last December, and it took him just under three months to restore. On Saturday, Dean, accompanied by his wife, Didi Dean, drove up from Shrewsbury to re-install the clock.
Fraser knew the clock was special, but he was surprised how many people asked him where it had gone when Dean was repairing it. The clock is 30 inches in diameter and 36 inches tall, accounting for the marquee that hangs over it.
“I didn’t really realize how attached the community was,” Fraser said. “It’s just sort of a part of history — town history — and now it has an even stronger connection to people now.”
Dean is no stranger to restoration projects. An engineer by trade and retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, he has also restored an Army jeep from World War II and a boat, but the Dan & Whit’s clock was his first clock.
“The most challenging part was to try to find parts,” Dean said.
After researching the history of the clock and the beverage company, he learned that the clock was created in Cleveland by the Electric Neon Clock Co. But the project took more than sourcing parts.
The clock was rusty and there were remnants of mud wasp nests inside. The three neon tubes were missing, as was the translucent minute face plate and the second hand. The transformer was burned out, and the motor was failing. He could not find a replacement face plate, so he used a photograph of a similar clock he found online to scale up measurements to have a new one created.
“In the end, it definitely makes the front of the clock much more attractive and correct,” Dean said.
Dean also made an improvement to extend the life span of the clock: a timer for when the neon will glow.
“It troubled me that on these clocks, the neon burns 24/7,” Dean said. “I thought, ‘How can I make these things last?’ ”
It took Dean about an hour to re-install the roughly 40-pound clock Saturday morning.
“This is beautiful,” Fraser said when he saw the clock. “I’ve never seen it up so close, look so good.”
Dean’s wife served as a dutiful assistant, passing him tools from his toolbag as he stood on the roof hanging over the first floor of Dan & Whit’s. Across the street, Dean’s mother, Nancy Dean, sat on the front stoop of what used to be their home, watching. From time to time, people would stop across the street and watch the process unfold.
“Oh wow, look at that,” Didi Dean said as she stepped on the roof once the clock was up.
After hanging and securing the clock and securing it in place, Dean got to work on the electrical. He set the neon timer to glow from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Veronica Rassias, a childhood friend of Dean’s who stopped by as he was working on the clock, planned on walking to Dan & Whit’s Saturday night to see it glowing with her family. She also has fond childhood memories of the clock, including checking it on the way to school to make sure she was not running late.
“I certainly looked at it every day,” she said as she watched Dean work.
After the clock was hooked up, Didi Dean and Rassias went up on the roof. Dean plugged the clock in and after an initial false start, made an adjustment that resulted in the neon glowing once again.
“It’s beautiful,” Rassias said. “It looks so beautiful.”
As the trio made their way outside Dan & Whit’s, Dean paused in the parking lot to look up at the clock, now ready for another generation of Norwich children to grow up with.
“Back in its place,” he said.
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
