Daylight Saving Time....

It's all over for 2014, except for the remaining clocks which still read the "old" time.  I'm not as diligent in changing the clocks when it is "fall back".  I figure if I get somewhere at the wrong time, it will be an error on the positive side.

Like when we were living in Sweden.  We were late for Church every single week.  There truly was a combination of challenges--but really nothing more than NOT preparing in advance for a frantic Sunday morning trying to get a family of seven ready to head out the door and into the car for a 25 minute drive.  Plus we usually swung by to pick up the missionaries on the way.  Oh, and Ross always got up just in time to be walking out the door at the exact minute we were supposed to be somewhere.  But on the Sunday standard time returned to Europe, the Nichols Family was not only on time, but early for the three hour block of meetings.  We had NO clue it was THAT Sunday until we arrived at Church and we were the first people there.  The missionaries loved to give us a good-natured ribbing that we were finally on time.

When I was a kid the only places which had daylight saving time in the summer were the big cities in the East like Chicago and New York, though the practice began during the First World War and lasted only until the war ended.  It was implemented again for the Second World War, but was again repealed right after the war.  By the time I was between my Sophomore and Junior years at BYU and working as a hostess at Adams Restaurant in Rawlins, Colorado had jumped on the band wagon of more daylight hours.  Tourists would leave Denver in the morning where they had breakfast and expect to have lunch by the time they had driven the 4-5 hours to Rawlins.  Nope!  Still serving breakfast until 11 AM.  There were lots of disgruntled people every day because the whole thing repeated for late afternoon/dinner time.  (That was when I learned the lesson that hungry people can really be a notch or two less than nice.)  States and cities were implementing their own versions of Daylight Saving Time. 

This patchwork of DT and ST was very disrupting to the whole country.  Order finally came in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act which standardized daylight saving time for the whole country  to be beteween the last Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October--except Indiana and Hawaii because each state had a choice whether or not to observe this "summer savings".

Harold was born on the last Sunday in October in 1969.  His birth certificate says he was born at 5:36 AM, but no one in the delivery room knew whether or not the time had changed back to MST or was MDT.  So the recording nurse put down the time which was on her watch, and the doctor signed it.  In reality Harold might be an hour older--or younger.  Who knows?!

A lot of people think that DST was promoted by farmers and other agrarians.  Not so.  They hated it because the dew finally came off the fields an hour later and the cows didn't know the difference from the clocks and were still ready to be milked at the same time.  No.  It screwed their lives up.

 During the oil crisis and embargo in the early 1970's President Nixon signed a law that made DST last all year long, supposedly to save energy.  You know, one extra hour of daylight meant less electricityfor lights, etc. Only it didn't shake out that way.  That savings was offset by the extra amount of electricity used for air conditioning, etc.  But I loved it!  I loved getting all my chores done in the dark, vacuuming under the beds while toddlers Harold and Brice still slept, so that when the sun finally came up I was all finished with the housework and we were ready to go down to the basement where I would spend the day sewing drapes while Harold and Brice played with blocks and Legos and LincolnLogs.  Those were the days we listened to the sound track recordings of just about EVERY Walt Disney movie that had been released up until that time.  Songs I hadn't really cared for before became real favorites, and I learned to love those simple stories of Pinochio wanting to be a real boy, and the family antics in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  

The April through October months meant that Halloween came AFTER daylight saving switched to standard time.  So, a few years ago first the beginning changed to the first week in April, then the ending came a week later than the last Sunday in October.  Sometimes still in October, or like this year in November.  Now April General Conference is often right in the middle of the change over from standard time to daylight saving.  I do know I don't like to be on a trip when it changes either direction.  It is confusing--and I have gotten ready a full two hours early when both the hotel and myself changed the clocks! 

I do like that snuggy feeling of dark at 5 pm.  And then if I go to bed an hour early for a week, I can get up without feeling tired.  That ain't a gonna happen tonight, though. Plus, I have blabbed on for long enough, so will pack it in at 11PM "real time" though the clock says it isn't quite ten.