Jeff Johnson is the owner-operator of Cowboy Clocks & Caning, along with his father, Bud Johnson. The father-son duo offers clock repair and caning services to customers in a 75 to 100 mile radius from their Alden-based shop. Although Jeff Johnson got his start in the concrete business, he is now a self-taught clock repair expert who works on everything from kitchen clocks to grandfather clocks.

Customers who enter Cowboy Clocks & Caning are greeted by a forest of grandfather clocks.

The repair shop, located on N. Broadway Street in Alden, contains a peaceful atmosphere. The quiet is only punctuated by semi-frequent chimes, dings and ‘cuckoos.’

Owner-operators Jeff Johnson and his father, Bud Johnson, have owned the downtown building since the 1990s.

However, the space did not become a haven for time-keeping machines until 2015, when Jeff received an unusual business proposition.

It all started, appropriately, with a grandfather clock.

It was Bud who bought the clock, intending to keep it in the Broadway Street shop. However, the clock was damaged during transport.

“It wouldn’t run, so he had an older gentleman come out from western Minnesota who said he could fix it,” Jeff recalls.

The clock repairman, 87-year-old Don Tesch, was looking for a successor to his business, and he asked Bud if he would be interested in taking it over. Bud declined, but suggested his son as an alternative candidate.

“I wasn’t anywhere around when he said that,” Jeff chuckles. “I had been retired only a couple of weeks.”

Still, Jeff thought the offer over.

“The longer I thought about it, I thought maybe it would be a good hobby,” he recalls. “There aren’t a lot of people doing it.”

Clock repair was a new venture for Jeff, who had spent most of his life working in the concrete business. He entered into the business with his father in 1971, after graduating from high school in Madelia.

Jeff paid Tesch a visit, and eventually figured out how to repair the grandfather clock Bud had bought.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool,'” he remembers.

He joined the Minnesota Clockmaker’s Guild, and met a clockmaker in Albert Lea, Ron Widenhoefer, who became his mentor.

“He guided me and told me what I needed, so I got deeply involved through him with repairing clocks,” Jeff explains.

Still newly-retired from the concrete business, Jeff originally planned to repair clocks as a hobby, reserving the rest of his time for projects at home.

However, the clock repair business proved so successful that Jeff’s new ‘hobby’ became a full-time job.

He explains that after the Albert Lea Tribune published an article about Cowboy Clocks & Caning in 2016, he was inundated with customers.

“It just went nuts,” he recalls. “It’s pretty much been that way ever since.”

Currently, Jeff has a 10-month waiting list for clock repairs. Given the long waiting list, he recommends calling ahead at 507-318-0707 to make an appointment.

He explains a clock can take three or four weeks to fully repair if it needs to be completely taken apart.

Clocks which just need to be cleaned and oiled may take a week or two to be put in working order.

Demonstrating with a bare clock mechanism, Jeff shows how the gear shafts are connected by tiny pivots, which are anchored in a pivot hole.

“(The hole) will get dusty and dirty, and an egg-shaped hole will wear in the plate,” he explains. “The two gears will run too close together, and it will stop.”

When this happens, Jeff takes apart the entire mechanism, carefully sorting the intricate pieces in Tupperware. He re-shapes the pivot hole so it is round again, and then installs a bushing to return the hole to its original size.

“Then, you can put it back together,” he concludes.

After completing this process, Jeff lets the mechanism run in a test stand for some time, and runs it again after it has been returned to its case.

“If there aren’t any issues, it can go home,” he says, adding, “I’ve got 50 of them I have to do that to.”

And, more customers continue to trickle through the doors, adding additional broken clocks to Jeff’s inventory.

Given the specialized nature of its services, Cowboy Clocks & Caning pulls clientele from a wide radius – about 75 to 100 miles from the Alden-based shop.

Jeff says many of the customers come from the Twin Cities area and from west of Alden – the Faribault and Martin County areas, in particular. He also serves customers from Iowa.

Jeff repairs the smaller clocks – kitchen clocks, mantle clocks, tambour clocks, cuckoo clocks and anniversary clocks – in the shop.

However, he makes house calls for grandfather clock repairs, as the giant timepieces are too unwieldy to transport.

Jeff’s long-time business partner – his father, Bud – also works at the shop, where he offers caning repair services.

The forest of grandfather clocks stationed in the shop’s front room belongs to Jeff.

“I’ve got 39 grandfather clocks,” he says. His entire clock collection numbers 212 timepieces in various shapes and sizes.

Although the shop’s side room offers some antique and collectible items – mostly clocks – for sale, Jeff says he largely avoids the retail side of the business.

“I had been buying and selling, but it was more buying than selling,” he explains. “The younger generation doesn’t like old cane chairs or clocks – they make too much noise, and they’ve got to wind them and set them.”

Jeff says most of Cowboy Clocks & Caning’s business comes from those seeking to repair a family heirloom.

It is that interaction with history which Jeff most enjoys about his occupation.

“I’ve worked on some (clocks) that were from the 1800s,” he shares. “There aren’t many things that can be 100, 200 years old that you can fix and make into a working piece again. It’s a very amazing piece of furniture.”