By KEVIN THORNTON
There is a ghost in the Neshobe School. It sits patiently in the main hallway. Anyone can see it. If you ask, it will tell its story.
The ghost is the Neshobe Clock. It sits outside the gym. Many of you reading this have walked by it many times, for Brandon Rec basketball games, for concerts and graduations and other school events, or maybe just for lunch. Almost no one notices it.
Once you do pay attention to it, the clock seems out of place. It’s stylistically wrong for the hallway and for the building in general. It’s far too old. It doesn’t even tell time. Why is this broken antique even in the school?
The clock is a relic of Brandon’s educational past. It was manufactured by the Standard Electric Time Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, probably between 1911 and 1920. That periodization makes perfect sense for Brandon because the clock was most likely purchased in 1917, before the then-new Brandon High School opened that October. The clock was the first thing anyone coming into the school via the main entrance would see facing them as they walked in. How do we know? Because the clock’s unmistakable outline is still on the wall facing the door in the main hallway.
The clock was a piece of advanced technology for its day. It was an electrically powered “Master Clock,” built to control the hands of any classroom clock wired to it. On the left side of the clock a paper ribbon system controlled the school’s bells. It is still in place today,
Brandon High School, renamed the Seminary Hill School, became a grade school when Otter Valley opened in 1961. When the Neshobe School opened in 1982 the old high school was abandoned. Its students and staff transferred to the new building. Someone took the clock with them. It was at that time already sixty-four years old.
At some point, in one school or the other, it either stopped working or was turned off. Now one-hundred-and-eight years old, Brandon High School’s ghost sits in the Neshobe School hallway. There don’t appear to be any parts missing. Who knows? Maybe all it needs is a good cleaning and an electrical connection to come to life once again.
The old school ghost may still have a thing or two to teach.
