Central Standard: A Time, a Place, a Family

CENTRAL STANDARD

Central Standard During World War II, the federal government imposed year-round daylight savings time on the entire nation as a means of diverting fuel consumption from civilian to military use. By setting the clocks ahead one hour, the sun appeared to set an hour later than before, and people turned on their electric lights an hour later, thereby allowing the power companies to use less fuel for the production of electricity. The energy saved could then be used to manufacture armaments. After the war ended, the central government returned control of the country’s clocks to state and local governments, most of which went back to standard time. I should point out that many authorities in the history of time keeping insist that the correct term is daylight saving time, not daylight savings time, but because the remaining two hundred and fifty million people in the country say daylight “savings” time, I will meekly follow the practice of the multitude. During the war, many people, especially city people, had found that they liked daylight savings time, especially in the summer, because it permitted them to spend more time in their backyards in the evenings, doing whatever it was that people did in their backyards in those days. Since the country was becoming more urban every year, the opinions of these people grew increasingly important. Nonetheless, many people and institutions still opposed daylight savings time, including farmers and railroads. Because my father was both a farmer and a railroad man, it will come as no surprise that he opposed daylight savings time. The debate over this issue continued throughout the fifties and into the sixties. In Iowa, one member of the state legislature made himself the darling of newspaper columnists across the country by proclaiming during an official legislative session that standard time was “God’s time.” Comedians, news writers, and anyone else who cared to join in the fun made great sport of the notion that the Almighty was using his infinite power tinkering with the clocks in Des Moines. [ c e n t r a l s t a n d a r d ] 123 My father preferred to keep his discussion of this issue entirely secular and made no attempt to summon divine powers to his side. I recall one occasion when he explained to an in-law, a cheerful, rotund man from Philadelphia, how daylight savings time complicated a farmer’s life. “If you feed your calves their corn at seven o’clock in the morning all summer long, that’s the time they’ll always come in from the pasture and line up at the feedbunk. But if you suddenly set your clock back an hour in the fall, the cattle still expect to be fed at the same time as before , even though your clock now says it’s only six o’clock instead of seven.” “So why not let them wait?” the man said in his metropolitan innocence. “Spend the night with us this fall and you’ll see why not,” Pete said, leaning back in his chair the way people do when they’re positive of something. “If you don’t feed them when they expect it, they’ll start to bellow. Do you have any idea how much noise twenty Angus steers can make when they all start bellowing at the same time?” He tilted his head to the side and waited. “No, I don’t. You’d better tell me.” “Enough noise to wake the dead. Enough to wake a whole graveyard . They’ll make so much noise they’ll get you out of bed and into the barnyard in your pajamas. And it won’t do any good to hang a clock on the barn. Cows’ clocks are in their stomachs, and as I’m sure you know, a cow has four stomachs.” The in-law from Philadelphia made no response to that comment. He was a psychology major and probably hadn’t made a detailed study of livestock stomachs. “So what do you do if the state goes on fast time?” he said, returning to the original subject. “You ignore it. You don’t change your clocks. You don’t change your watch. You stay on standard time all year long.” And that is precisely what a great many farmers did when their states adopted daylight savings time. I’m sure many beef and dairy farmers still do the same thing today. The Rock Island and...