Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

My mother has, for many years, expressed her strong dislike of Daylight Saving Time. She asked me yesterday when she could cash in all the daylight hours she's saved over her 99 years.

This weekend, we'll all be grumbling about losing an hour of sleep - even those who profess to like the change. The New York Times today tells me "What To Know About Daylight Saving Time" with the following: "to farmers, daylight saving time is a disruption foisted on them by the federal government. To parents, it's a nuisance that throws bedtime into chaos."

Here's the opinion of one Potter County farmer from April 1943:

"The Enterprise is in receipt of the following which we admit we do not know how to handle so we pass it on to our readers: 'Can't you give the farmers a break in the Enterprise on daylight saving (war time, so called)? I know that very many of your readers are farmers and of all the handicaps that the farmer has to contend with, this foolish law is the most vicious. I see that there is a bill up in Congress to repeal this nuisance. Every farmer ought to write to his Senator and representative asking him to use is vote and influence to get rid of this handicap. The farmers have been regimented, strangulated, handicapped, red taped and bulldozed until they are not much better than foreign peasants. It isn't any wonder that with insects, blight, floods, droughts, ceilings and red tape in nearly everything that so many farmers are throwing the sponge and departing cityward where they can make more money in a month than they can on the farm in a years,. Think it over."

30 March 1950:
Daylight saving time! The same old bugaboo is just in the offing. Here's one of those "do not use my name" letters: 'Daylight saving time is a detriment to school children and farmers especially. If others like to have an extra hour at night, they can get up an hour earlier, only leave the clock alone. The sun doesn't rise any earlier or set any later by fast time.'

23 April 1953:
Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday in Coudersport as in all other towns in this section - over the whole country, as a matter of fact. There are those who complain bitterly over tampering with the clock but since this is a country of majority rule we may as well set all the timepieces ahead Saturday night and smile. There will be arguments and we'll hear plenty of them but we've heard 'em before so what's the use. Be sure to set your clocks and watches ahead so you'll be on time for church Sunday morning and we hope the sun will shine brightly.

29 April 1954:
The change over to advanced time was made with no hitches in schedules Sunday. How different it was a few years ago when first daylight-saving was proposed, discussed and finally adopted generally. There are still people who do not like 'tinkering with time,' but we do not hear it discussed - and cussed - as a few years ago, and we do not know of any city or town that does not change over to DST.

Does anybody really know what time it is
... does anybody really care?
If so, I can't imagine why.
We've all got time enough to cry
– Robert William Lamm
Chicago

As the notes of this Chicago song flow from Arthur's trumpet as he practices downstairs, I leave you with this from my mother's father. 

"Soon will come again advanced time –daylight saving time. Some of us wonder what we did with all the daylight saved over the years."