It’s a story about a clock beginning in 1910: timeless, and, yet, time-full.

It’s a clock that’s survived almost 100 years of fame, facelifts, retirement, a comeback and, finally, potential demise. And, like an old Hollywood starlet, it’s a clock that’s faced it all with grace and resilience.

“It was built in 1910 in Minneapolis,” Archer said. “It was a gorgeous clock, built by O.B. McClintock. It was the same year the bank was founded, the Farmers State Bank.”

Of course, in 1910, there were already three banks operating in Temple, and there was no room left on Main Street. But Albert Flint Sr. wanted to make Farmers State Bank the fourth.

The surrounding farming and ranching industries were doing well, and the population had been steadily growing. As Maggie Abercrombie wrote in her 1880 “Sketch of Bell County,” “enterprises are flourishing in this place.” That same year, Bell County’s population reached 20,000 - more than doubling the population of 1870.

By 1910, Temple alone boasted a population 11,000 and Flint knew that Farmers State Bank would have a place in the growing town.

Thus, unable to find room on Main Street, he moved into the Stevens Building on the northwest corner of Second Street and Avenue A.

The bank opened its doors on Nov. 3, right in time for the financial height of the farming season, and, fortunately, right in time for a good crop year. The first day’s deposits added up to $18,969.24. In two weeks, that number more than quadrupled to reach the $100,000 mark. The bank was a success.

The next year, room opened up on the desired Main Street, and the new bank moved to a second location on Main Street and Avenue A. It remained there for almost 20 years.

It was during those 20 years that Temple’s most famous clock became an icon.

Flint purchased the large double-faced clock for $1,000 and had it mounted on the outside of the building, where it stayed from 1917 until 1952, serving as a sort of mascot for the bank.

“It was an unusual thing to have on the outside of the building,” Helen Lingnau, a former cashier at the bank, said. “It was a pretty thing, colorful. You know, it was an outstanding piece.”

The clock originally ran on batteries. But it also contained a monitor device that made sure it didn’t lose or gain any time. This device, this reliability, is what made the clock so famous.

“You see, Temple was a railroad town by then,” Archer said. “So the railroad men would actually set their time by it. You could see the clock from the station.”

Robert Ozment, whose father was a railroader, called the Farmers State Bank a “railroaders bank.”

“It was there when I was a child,” he said. “It would ring and you could hear it all downtown.”

Ozment eventually wrote a book about the bank, for which a picture of the clock served as the cover.

But in 1952, the clock was taken down and retired from service.

The bank eventually moved to its current location at 100 W. Adams, and, in the fall of 1975, the chairman and president of the bank decided to bring the clock back. They asked Archer, who worked at the bank, to have it restored.

“I was an operations officer then. And they had this brand new building. So I took the clock to Austin in a pickup truck and had it converted from batteries to electric.”

When the conversion was complete and the stained glass had been restored, Archer brought it to the new building.

There, Lingnau said it served as a conversation piece.

“It was hung in a very prominent place in the lobby,” Carol Jones recalled. “It was really pretty when it was restored.”

Jones, who worked for 18 years as an assistant to H.K. Allen, the chairman of the bank, said the clock served as an icon right up until new management took over a few years back and decided it had to go.

According to Ozment’s book, it was decided that the clock did not match the new granite facing.

“You know, it’s so sad,” she said. “When the bank got taken over by other people someone just destroyed all those pictures, destroyed all this history of the town forever and ever. But those things happen. And as you grow older, you learn that whatever’s now ain’t gonna be there when you get to be my age. It’s all gonna be different, and you just gotta roll with how it goes.”

Archer’s version of “rolling with how it goes” meant rescuing the clock from obscurity in an old storage closet.

“The ladies in the bank had called me a couple years ago and said, ‘You’re not gonna believe what they’re gonna do!’ So I paid for the storage of it. And we got it fixed up again a little bit,” he said. “Then we got it to Stephanie (Turnham).”

Ms. Turnham is director of the Bell County Museum, where the clock is now displayed in the “Crossing Centuries” section. It resides with numerous other Temple and Bell County artifacts - handwritten ledgers and railroad lanterns that seem to serve as a reminder of the many things old and nostalgic afforded no place in the world of modern industry.

“Of course, I was glad to see it got to be preserved,” Lingnau said. “A few of us who used to be employees went over to the dedication at the museum. And it was so good to see each other again.”