Cuckoo for clocks: Black Forest Christmas Village opening Sunday

No, you’re not going cuckoo. That is, in fact, a cuckoo clock store in Silver Lake Mall. 

Black Forest Christmas Village presented by Clocktology will be having its grand opening on Sunday. Run by the father-daughter duo of Alan Rush and Codie Mathison, Black Forest Christmas Village was started after years of Rush selling refurbished cuckoo clocks on eBay and his Clocktology website.

“We saved all our clocks for this,” Rush said. “(Mathison) wanted to start a business, so I said I wanted her to be a success and I totally support her.”

Rush, who is affectionately called Geppetto after trying to find an online moniker, is self-trained in repairing the cuckoo clocks and is passing that knowledge down to his children, including Mathison.

“They're seeing the writing on the wall: What are we going to do when dad dies?” Rush said. “My oldest son is now interested after 30 years of ‘just liking it,’ and my middle son is now very interested.”

Rush got into repairing clocks in the ‘80s after his late wife would bring them home from flea markets and garage sales asking if he could fix them up.

“The more clocks I got running, the more she brought home because she was getting them for $10,” Rush said. “That's how we ended up with 20 or 30 clocks all on our wall, tick-tocking away.”

After his wife passed away in 2008, Rush started selling cuckoo clocks to supplement his income. The money provided some good holiday cash, he says. Soon enough, Rush settled on a company name, Clocktology, to sell clocks online. Rush took a five-year break from fixing cuckoos before picking it back up again last Christmas.

“That's when we decided (Mathison) wanted to get in, and so we all started buying clocks to fix,” Rush said.

Mathison is excited to get the shop up and running after the response she’s received from passersby while she and her father prepare the shop for opening day.

“This is our side business, but there’s an overwhelming amount of people that are coming in here and telling us we should be here all year,” Mathison said. “I don't know how we'd work it, but it's always an option.”

Many of these visitors become nostalgic about their parents or grandparents having a cuckoo clock and the memories they have associated with it.

“It seems everybody’s grandma had one,” Mathison said. “These can be passed down through generation and generation, and it doesn't have to phase out. These are timeless traditions.”

Rush and Mathison are hoping younger generations will come into the store and be inspired to purchase a cuckoo clock or keep the skill alive and learn how to fix a clock themselves.

“It would be awesome if we were the ones that helped it continue to these next generations,” Mathison said. “All you have to do is show the younger generation. Every kid that’s come in here has been in awe.”

They envision the business taking off, joking that they’ll be on Good Morning America someday soon. But if it doesn’t, the passion for fixing cuckoos will always be there and Rush will have passed his knowledge along.

“It must be what I’m meant to do because I have so much fun doing it,” Rush said.

    Alan Rush repairs a cuckoo clock just outside his new business, Black Forest Christmas Village presented by Clocktology, which is set to open Sunday at noon at Silver Lake Mall.
  

    Alan Rush takes a look at a cuckoo clock under repair.
  

    Codie Mathison stands with a few of the clocks available at Black Forest Christmas Village presented by Clocktology, the new business she's started with her father, Alan Rush.