SNOHOMISH – He is comfortable here, around old clocks.
Small or big, they tick, pendulums swinging. The radio plays piano jazz. His German shepherd Gus is asleep, surrounded by clocks, some a few hundred years old.
“The history,” he says, looking around.
He doesn’t hear the ticking any more, not after living countless hours in his tiny shop on First Street, across from an ice cream parlor.
He’s bought, fixed and sold clocks for 15 years. Last year he found a street clock. Four-sided, 17 feet tall, about a century old.
It’s in pieces now.
He’s painting it gold and carefully putting its movement together. It should stand on the sidewalk in front of his shop.
The clock already seems to belong to the small downtown decorated by U.S. flags and flower baskets. Snohomish’s antiques drew him here to the downtown, flanked by small buildings, that he loves.
And he loves clocks, but doesn’t use them much. He usually goes to bed at 11 p.m., then gets up at 4 a.m. without an alarm clock. Sometimes, he wishes he didn’t need to sleep, like a clock.
“Not enough time in a day,” he says.
Inside his shop, some clocks have stopped. He hasn’t wound them.
This summer, he also plans to wind down some. He, his father and his own 21-year-old son are taking a fishing trip, his first vacation in three or four years.
Perhaps, he may finish putting together the pieces of the street clock as summer fades into fall. He hopes so.
On this sunny afternoon, he wears a loupe, a blue eye fixed on the tiniest watch.
All around, pendulums swing. Their tick-tock skips the ears of David Doto, who loves them.
Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com.
Street clock project
David Doto, 57, owner of Legends Antiques &Clocks in Snohomish, wants to install a four-sided antique street clock on the sidewalk in front of the shop at 905 First St.
The Snohomish City Council heard his proposal in May, then directed city staff to work with Doto to figure out details. No timetable has been set for the council’s final decision on the project.
Doto is refurbishing the exterior and interior workings of the clock, which he figures is about 100 years old.
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