Timekeepers

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Yippies tore the hands off this clock during a midnight "Festival of Life" event in 1968, according to Grand Central: Gateway to a Million Lives (John Belle and Maxinne R. Leighton). When asked why they chose to meet in Grand Central, they replied, "It's Central, man."

Photographer's notes: A co-worker saw "Seven Secrets of Grand Central" on PBS last week, and one of the secrets is they had appraisers try to place a value on this clock and they couldn't. It was IN-valuable because of the opalescent glass used in the faces. The Rube asked if they were sure about this, because it looks like the face could just as well be made of plastic or rice paper, but was assured that one of the principal qualities of opalescent glass is its resemblance to plastic or rice paper.

Another was that all the clocks in Grand Central (see Fig. 2 and 3) are radio-controlled and reset remotely at 2 AM in the morning, so that they are always within 1 second of the actual time. ... Now would be a real good time for one of you viewers to pipe up and confirm or amplify these stories, as the Rube only gets channel 5 on his t.v..

In Fig. 3, the Rube was going to draw your attention to the beauty of the Caen stone (a colored limestone from a town in France), but in reading Belle and Leighton's book, it seems that only some is real, and some is plaster colored to look like the stone. On his next visit he will try tapping on it to see if he can tell the difference.