"Are you A Manchester Girl?"

Believe it or not (and whether or not you are “A Manchester Person” yourself, you probably will believe it), I get asked that question a lot. My standard answer is, “Not yet … I’ve only lived here 30 years.”

Actually, I’ve been exaggerating a little bit in order to camouflage my age. I’ve actually considered Manchester my hometown since I graduated high school in 1972 and started working at Union Savings Bank. Oops, now you’re probably doing the math, so let me assure you I was one of the youngest members of my class.

But I have lots of fond memories of my years at the bank. Back then, Union Savings Bank was the only bank in town, so by working there for the next eight years, I got to know most everyone in the community. And I also learned a lot about local history, politics, family connections, and gossip. Sometimes, they were all the same.

The face of Manchester’s downtown has changed a lot, mostly for the better. In the early 70s, Don Limpert was still buying up and restoring buildings on Main Street.  Other business owners started to take interest in the buildings they owned, as well. So the deterioration of the once-proud downtown was stopped, with Limpert taking the lead in keeping our historic heritage alive.

One of the only downtown buildings he failed to preserve back then is the old Union Savings Bank building (now Comerica Bank). Years ago, he classified the first-floor renovations to that building in the late 1970s as akin to “giving a 90-year-old woman a facelift.” I think that’s Don’s subtle way of saying it’s inappropriate.

It’s great that the current building owner, Ron Milkey, is trying to give the building some new life. It’s a struggle in the current economy. But there is still some of the old-fashioned elegance on the second floor, along with nice modern updates. The third floor houses the Masonic Lodge, as it has for more than a century, and it seems to have remained much the same as it’s looked since its earliest days.

One thing I miss the most about the old bank is not inside the building, however. And it’s not the (ugly) tin façade that preceded the 1978 renovation. It’s the clock that used to be out front, with a beautiful stained-glass, back-lit “Union Savings Bank” sign on the top half. The sign now says Comerica, as you’d expect, but it’s not back-lit anymore.

Back in the day, the entire town based its time on that clock and its chime on the quarter-hour. I remember Ron Walter, the Cashier at the bank, took the clock as his personal responsibility (after Harold Alexander retired). In the days when the fire whistle used to sound every day, he’d often check to make sure the chimes on the clock were also marking it as noon. And when the clock said 5:00 p.m., everyone knew that the sidewalks could now be rolled up for the night. (Except for the Black Sheep).

Nowadays, there are chimes every quarter-hour on the Emanuel and St. Mary churches, but there is no clock; only a broken face with no hands. You can be walking down Main Street and you don’t know what time it is unless it’s the stroke of the hour and you happen to stop long enough to count the chimes.

I still look up at the old clock pretty often as I pass by, hoping that maybe it’s been fixed when I wasn’t looking. I’m afraid that it won’t be. It’s probably too old to fix, especially after it’s been idle so long.

I guess the hardest part for me to face is that now I’m part of the “old generation” and maybe one of the few who remembers all of this. I wonder how many others even know there was once a reliable old time piece in what is now basically a blank space downtown. Maybe they’re all in too much of a hurry to notice.

But maybe my old-time memories will make me A Manchester Girl yet.