Houses, Clocks, and...eh...Walls

For your reading pleasure today, three uniquely-different stories, tied together thanks to John Bellairs. Or something like that.

The House...
This September is Marshall's 54th annual Historic Home Tour.  This year, the Midwest's longest-running home tour will feature more than 20 sites including six private residences.  Of note for Bellairs fans will be the home of Jeremiah Cronin, the impressive "House" as seen in The House with a Clock in its Walls (...and this blog post).  More Cronin fun this time around as the J. H. Cronin Store* on Michigan Avenue will also be featured.  Museums part of the tour include the Honolulu House, the Marshall Historical Museum at the GAR Hall (where you can see, but not ride, John's old bicycle), Capitol Hill School, American Museum of Magic, U. S. Postal Service Museum, the Governor's Mansion, and Walter's Gasoline Museum.  Get your tickets from the Marshall Historical Society (MHS) for the event, scheduled September 9-10, 2017.

* MHS also notes the Cronin Store, built by Jeremiah Cronin in 1869, is being converted into a restaurant and apartments.

The Clock...
Every night at 6:50 ET -- 7:50 during daylight saving time -- the alarm clock stuck in the Pennsylvania homeowner's living room wall rings. And rings. And rings.  So tells CNN:

...[E]very night since he dropped it down the second-floor air vent in September 2004, the incessant beeping starts like clockwork. It starts off softly, then gets louder and louder. The ringing lasts just less than a minute, Lynn said, adding that he can hear it from any room on the first floor.  Thirteen years ago, Lynn tied his wife's clock to a string and lowered it through the vent toward the living room. He needed to figure out where to poke a hole in the wall to hook up his TV wire. Lynn thought he could listen to the alarm, which he set to go off after 10 minutes, and know where to put the hole.  That was before the string broke and the clock fell to the bottom, where it has been going off at the same time in perpetuity....

It's not quite the Izards but it does have a nice ring to it. 

The Walls....

Unknown until now, in about 1966, the Glencoe [Illinois] Public Library became The Library with a Purse in Its Walls, and staff members are now seeking further clues in solving the mystery of the 51-year-old fold-over leather clutch.  Thus the Daily North Shore:

But this was no ordinary lost purse. On further inspection, it was revealed to be something of a mini-time capsule purportedly from a half-century ago. Contractors found the purse in the course of installing an enhanced HVAC system, a project scheduled to be completed mid-summer.  Inside the purse were intriguing artifacts: a nail brush, a lipstick, a single earing, a Mongol 480 pencil, and two black and white photographs. One is of a youngish-looking girl reminiscent of the character Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The other is of an older woman, bundled against the cold and standing in front of a snow-covered house.

The Library with a Purse in Its Walls makes us think of what Myra Eells lost while subbing at the library out in Rollingstone, Minnesota that summer.  That, or if there are stains there that could tell stories of spilled Cokes, badly aimed golf club swings, or indoor plant pruning mishaps.