HOUSTON – When the seasons change, residents of Houston hear bells ringing as Gene Johnson resets the clock in the Courthouse. Johnson has been employed at the Courthouse for 14 years and has had charge of resetting the clock during that time.

“Mr. Horace Kilgore showed me how to set it,” Johnson said. “He was here before me. You have to get in every kind of shape to set that thing, reaching around it and over it.”

The clock, made by the E. Howard Clock Company, uses a complicated series of pulleys and cogs and Johnson said that setting the clock in the spring is less time consuming that the fall reset.

“It takes an hour or better to set it back,” Johnson said. “You have to go all the way around the clock. If you lose your spot, you have to wait until it rings and start over. Setting it forward in the spring takes just a few minutes.”

From the third floor of the courthouse, Johnson uses a wall ladder to access the dome and this year, he had company. Houston City Clerk, Bobby Sanderson, climbed along to check out the seasonal transition.

“I’ve been trying to get the opportunity to do that several years and I just never had a chance,” Sanderson said. “This year I told him to let me know when he was going because I wanted to go along. I’ve listened to it chime all my life and I wanted to see what made it go ‘tick-tock’.”

Sanderson contributed the photographs of the clock shown and also uploaded a brief video about the setting of the clock on youtube.com. Search for “Chickasaw clock” for the video.

Sanderson isn’t the only one who has made the trip to the dome for the time change. Rex Sanderson remembers accompanying Robert “Pee Wee” Kilgore on the trip.

“I used to go up with him and Pee Wee would walk on the outside of the columns,” R. Sanderson said.

“Wanda (Sweeney) wanted to go and she went right up like a squirrel,” Johnson said.

Along with his duty of keeping the time, Johnson said his other job responsibilities include, “whatever these women around here holler at me to do.”

Except repair the clock.

“No, if it malfunctions, someone else has to fix it,” Johnson said. “I just set it.”