THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270237
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Today is one of the sorriest days of the year. It's the one day that I hope is marked by nasty weather.
Because if it's gorgeous, as it has been for the past couple of weeks, it makes the day even harder to tolerate.
The reason, of course, is that we are giving up an hour of daylight today as we set our clocks back to Eastern Standard Time.
I don't mind too much if it rains and blows and ruins outdoor endeavors today. But if it is nice, I hate to see the sun set long before I'm ready to give up for the day.
It has been getting dark about 7 p.m., and usually I'm able to enjoy beautiful sunsets over Roanoke Island as I head for home after work.
But no more will nature provide me with a spectacular ending to my day.
For the next five months, I'll be driving home in the dark, grumbling as we wait until we can set our clocks ahead in April when daylight-saving time returns.
I haven't always been a DST advocate. When I was a lad in Nebraska, I sided with neighboring farmers who used to fight fast time because they claimed that an extra hour of daylight would dry out the fields and ruin the harvest.
They also had my backing when they contended that shorter nights would keep the milk cows from getting enough rest to produce a full bag of milk in the morning.
My relatives in the city used to roll their eyes when I advanced my neighbors' arguments, but of course they didn't know much about farming - or anything else that counted, as far as that goes.
However, there were a lot more city folks than farmers, so a daylight-savings time bill always made it through the unicameral legislature back in the days when states and not the feds decided such issues.
And as I grew older and became a city guy myself, I switched sides, abandoning my bucolic theories.
Fast time, I discovered, was a delight, providing an extra hour of daylight after work to play golf or go sailing or work in the yard or take the kids to the zoo.
That's what fast time was designed to do, along with saving on electricity.
Great Britain first adopted DST in World War I to cut energy costs, since lights didn't have to be turned on as early in the evening. The U.S. took up the plan in 1918 but killed it a year later. During World War II there was a jig-saw puzzle of time zones with cities and states in the U.S. deciding whether to stay traditional or go for fast time.
Congress tried settle the issue in 1967 by passing a national law governing time. And in 1986 DST became official across the nation from the first Sunday of April to the last Sunday of October.
Today, my friends, is the last Sunday in October.
And I hate it. I don't care if all those milk cows on the farms of my friends back in Nebraska did give more milk this morning, or the crops are doing better.
I'd like to see the government make DST the official time year around. In fact, I'd favor adopting some of the European countries' policy of double fast time, moving the clocks ahead TWO hours so there would be all kind of daylight after work.
The Albemarle watermen who already start their day in the dark probably wouldn't go for that, of course. They want the sun up as early as possible as they head their boats into the Atlantic long before dawn.
And one of my fishing friends pointed out to me that now that we're back on standard time, there's an extra hour of daylight BEFORE I go to work. All I have to do to enjoy the same amount of daylight, he says, is get up an hour earlier.
Isn't that the silliest solution you ever heard? by CNB