Mall walkers in baggy sweats breeze in to check the time and then breeze back out.

The pendulum swings. The grandfather clock's second hand ticks like a heartbeat.

"I don't know what the mall walkers would do if we sold it," said Sharon Gatewood, manager of the Henebry's Jewelers store in Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke County.

Perhaps mall walkers need not worry.

The Bulova clock's price has been slashed from $2,700 to $1,350 and still it stands. The clock was at Henebry's when Gatewood started at the Tanglewood store more than two years ago.

Like many others, Gatewood said young homeowners seem little interested in the big clocks, which can be taller than Shaquille O'Neal. And contemporary floor plans for new single-family homes sometimes omit formal living and dining rooms, a design trend that affects sales, she believes.

Older folks seem more inclined, Gatewood said, to at least hunt for an heirloom their children can inherit.

Yet directly across the mall, at MLC Furniture, store manager Donna Tatum said young adults account for about 50 percent of the store's grandfather clock buyers.

Last week, she had 15 grandfather clocks lined up against the wall, waiting to be shopped. Clock prices at MLC can be more than $1,000.

Tatum acknowledged that young people furnishing first homes on thin budgets tend to buy what she calls "fake clocks" -- the grandfather clocks displaying big brass weights that play no timekeeping role.

"I do sell a lot of these little starter clocks," she said.

MLC, which stands for Manufacturers Liquidation Center, also sells grandfather clocks with cabinetry sort of cobbled together. Those sell for a modest $139. MLC also imports cabinets and then installs clockworks ordered from Germany, Tatum said.

Paul Hoffman is general manager of the clock division for the Howard Miller clock company. Howard Miller Corp. acquired Ridgeway Clock Co. of Ridgeway, Va., in November 2004. Ridgeway clocks are now manufactured in Zeeland, Mich.

"It's about the only type of furniture still manufactured in the U.S.," Hoffman said. His intentional overstatement seems more accurate than it is, given the scores of furniture factory closings in the region during the past decade.

Hoffman said many young homeowners might rather spend a few thousand dollars on a flat-screen TV than a tall, chiming piece of furniture that needs periodic winding. Who needs an heirloom when ESPN beckons?

"We're fighting for the disposable dollar," he said. "The overall demand for grandfather clocks is flat, at best."

That said, it seems unlikely that parents will hand down electronic gizmos to their children.

"A grandfather clock that's passed down almost becomes part of the family," Hoffman said. "It's kind of a living thing."

Ridgeway grandfather clocks retail from about $1,000 to $3,000, he said. The company's marketing tagline is "the heartbeat of the home."

That heart has stopped beating at Virginia Furniture Market, a retail furniture store south of Boones Mill on U.S. 220. The store offered a limited selection of grandfather clocks until about five years ago.

"At that time, based on limited demand, we decided to not carry them," said Joel Shepherd, owner.

Like Gatewood, Shepherd said home design trends might be helping to depress sales.

"I would suggest that the reason is more informal lifestyles, which also results in less demand for formal dining rooms and living rooms," he said. "Customers are more interested in function and day-to-day usability to make the most of their furniture."

In his basement workshop in Raleigh Court, Lee Thompson, 53, repairs grandfather and cuckoo clocks. He cares both about usability and family traditions.

"For me, the most rewarding thing about this work is taking a family heirloom that isn't functioning and getting it into the condition where it does work," said Thompson.

His clock-tinkering bent showed itself early.

"My brother said that every time he went to look for his watch I would have it," he said.

Thompson's penchant for collecting clocks led to a sideline job of repairing them. He works about 35 hours per week as a truck driver for FedEx and another 30 repairing clocks.

"As a collector, I ended up with clocks that didn't run," he said. "In order to justify the expense for the hobby, I had to learn how to fix them."

A retired Ridgeway Clock veteran tutored Thompson early on. The rest has been self-taught, he said.

Thompson's been a repairman since 2001, working with tools that include tiny broaches, a bushing machine, a spring winder and a metal lathe to get the clocks back on their feet.

He once worked on a 150-year-old grandfather clock, he said.

The repairman himself owns two grandfather clocks, one in need of work.

"I'm busy enough that I don't get to work on my own clocks," he said. "I'm kind of like the mechanic with his car up on blocks in the front yard."

Although work keeps coming, Thompson agrees that sales of new grandfather clocks seem to be off.

"Demand seems to be slower, among young people, in particular," he said. "I'm getting fewer calls to set them up."

Many grandfather clocks require careful transport and setup. Some retailers offer both. Some don't. Consumers already ambivalent about buying a towering timepiece might shrink from spending more to get them home and ticking, said Greenwood.

Thompson said grandfather clocks, on average, require winding every eight days or so. About every five years, the clock's precision innards need to be cleaned and oiled.

"When oil becomes dusty it becomes almost like an abrasive," he said. "Eventually, something will stop running, stop chiming, stop working."

And what might the future hold for grandfather clock sales? (There are also grandmother and granddaughter clocks.)

Hoffman is hopeful. The baby boomer generation is one promising demographic, he said. Empty nesters sometimes buy the clocks, he said, because "the sound of the chimes is welcome in what has become a quiet house.

"When you slow down a little bit, you start to think about what kind of legacy you might leave your children," added Hoffman.

Many baby boomers recall the grandfather clock of their childhoods. One character on the Captain Kangaroo TV show was the sleepy, talking Grandfather Clock.

Perhaps some scarcely conscious but nudging nostalgia will help wind up sales for the heirlooms-to-be. After all, the contemporary family's gigantic, new flat-screen television will be obsolete before baby's first step.