S-Town · Serial Productions

Chapter IV

March 28, 2017·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

John gold-plated a dime for his college professor, saying, 'You'll have a souvenir from Shit Town, Alabama.'

John opens his Alabama bedroom to me. The computer, sitting eye level atop a large professional-grade sound system, is surrounded by CDs and unopened Furbies, while John scrolls through a 53-page document packed with charts, graphs, images, and a hard, uneasy theory of economic, environmental, and societal decline. He talks through it as if it were ordinary. The document moves from climate change to violence, pornography, Westboro Baptist Church protesters, and even an image of Lady Gaga being vomited on, as though all of it belongs in the same private archive. At one point, he reaches for a file he keeps on hand. The line lands with a joke and a chill, because what he casually names is a suicide note he has ready if it is ever needed. The chapter then turns to clockwork. Alan recalls watching John diagnose a broken Elliott clock, identify the gathering palette, and dismiss the idea of a quick machined replacement because real restoration means preserving the original craft. John does not need a diagram. He takes steel, files a new part by hand, and fits it into place over the course of about three and a half hours. Alan watches in disbelief. For him, that moment marks the start of a friendship built on shared work, mutual respect, and the quiet thrill of seeing someone solve a problem from memory. They trade emails. They talk every few days, meet about once a month, troubleshoot more clocks, wander around John's yard, and break for lunch at the local grocery store. Alan tries to get John out on the lake. John declines because he cannot stay away from his mother that long, and the answer says as much about him as the technical brilliance does. The episode keeps those two versions of John side by side. One is the man with the alarming manifesto and the ready suicide note; the other is the master horologist who can make a rare mechanism sing again with needle files and patience. Neither version gets softened. Together they make the chapter feel intimate, uneasy, and exact.

As heard by us

A study in obsession, repair, and the uneasy space between them.

Chapter 4 sets a bedroom scene in Alabama against a clock restoration, and the contrast does most of the work. The room is crowded with CDs, unopened Furbies, a serious sound system, and a 53-page manifesto that runs from climate change and decline into violence and pornography,…

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Why you'd press play

For the listener who wants a bedroom manifesto and a clock rebuilt by hand.

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