It started with an auction.

Retired Emmaus attorney John Stover, a fan and collector of clocks, joined bidders at an estate auction about a decade ago at a home on South Fifth Street in Emmaus borough.

And there it was.

A grandfather clock. And a problem.

There was also another bidder, a man from out of state, with plans to take the clock from its Emmaus home.

Stover took action.

“I blew him out,” Stover said with a laugh of the bidding challenge.

And when the dust settled, the clock was his.

“I wanted it to stay in town in a place of prominence,” Stover said in a recent interview. “Here is where it belongs.”

Here is where it was built.

In a news clipping from the then Emmaus Free Press (now the East Penn Press) dated Aug. 1, 1978, a Xerox copy of which came with clock, Stover learned the towering timepiece was made by entrepreneur and craftsman Elwood Dreas, who owned Dreas Garage on North Fourth Street, according to his 1986 obituary.

Dreas selected and hand cut the cherry trees used for the clock. Emmaus Free Press staff writer Beverly Rinaggio explains the trees traveled to a local lumber mill where they were cut into boards. The boards then returned to Dreas. He allowed the boards to season for more than 10 years in “a tiny attic workshop” before starting work on the clock.

“It’s an old craft,” Stover said of Dreas’ skill.

In his 1975 book “Collectors’ Guide to Antique American Clocks,” author Marvin D. Schwartz devotes chapters to grandfather clocks pre- and post-Revolutionary War. “The grandfather clock was the most popular American-made timepiece in the period before the Revolution,” Schwartz begins chapter three of his book.

“A grandfather clock,” Schwartz writes, “was the product of the combined labors of a cabinet maker who made the case and a clockmaker who provided the movement.”

Dreas, Rinaggio writes in the 1978 front page newspaper story, bought the inner workings of his clocks from Germany.

“Dreas himself sets, tunes and polishes the brass pendulum,” Rinaggio writes, once the brass clock mechanism is installed.

The clock, which does not have a key to wind it, is wound through use of chains.

Stover’s law office routine included winding the clock once a week.

“I always was mechanical,” Stover said. “I always wanted to know how something worked. I broke many toys trying to find out,” he said with a smile.

The Dreas clock once stood in his Stover’s Emmaus law offices, presiding over the conference room where clients and attorneys would meet.

“That clock has heard a lot of stuff and it’s still working,” Stover joked.

Upon his recent retirement, Stover intended to take his old friend home; however, his collection of home clocks prohibited the move. A grandfather clock once owned by his father-in-law, a cuckoo clock and several other chiming and mechanical masterpieces were already in residence.

Stover chose to gift the clock to Emmaus Borough and the Dreas clock now makes its home in the second floor meeting room where Emmaus Borough Council conducts the business of the borough.

In the updated Emmaus Borough Hall the clock stands a sentry from the mid-20th century with roots in a pre-Revolutionary War “preference for clocks in tall, narrow wooden cases,” according to Schwartz.

“I hated to part with it,” Stover said. “But I really didn’t. It is still here and I can still see it.”

The reporter thanks Joie Jackson-Wenner for help in locating a copy of the Aug. 1, 1978, edition of the Emmaus Free Press where the initial coverage of the clock appeared.