WESTPORT, NY. (WCAX) – When Michael Fergot manually winds up the mechanical clock at the Westport Library Association, he can feel time come into being.
“What is truly eternal is now, or it never was. If I don’t have a relationship to the eternal yet, give yourself a little time. If you want a deeper relationship to eternity, give yourself a little time,” Michael Fergot, a Westport Library Association trustee said.
Fergot has been the volunteer timekeeper for almost five years.
He climbs the tower every ninety-six hours to raise the weights attached to the mechanism. If the weights reach the bottom, time stops.
The library opened 140 years ago, and the clock tower was built in 1908, ticking the last 116 years by.
As the times change, though, there have been other additions to the library that help support the community.
“We installed Wi-Fi, like broad area Wi-Fi, it meets all of this part of downtown, similar to when, maybe, they were adding the clocktower, so that all Westporters would have a reference to time,” Christopher Rice, a Westport Library Association Trustee said.
Rice also said the trustees had tried to electrify the clock, most recently around 2012, but kept it as an heirloom instead.
“The American Tower Clock Company responded and said something like, ‘oh, you have an amazing clock in original condition, and it would be really sad if you were to override this and change this clock.’ So, they said our clock was a real gem,” Rice said.