Daylight Savings Time

I’ve always had trouble with daylight savings time, so I’m very happy to live in Arizona where we don’t mess with our clocks.

In 1951, I took a job on the New York Central Railroad, working for the summer with a bunch of other college students on the signal gang. Of course, daylight savings time was in effect, and I knew that the railroad didn’t operate on daylight savings time, so that meant there was a difference of one hour between our clock and theirs. My father couldn’t drive me to the job site the first day, so I had arranged for my Aunt Evelyn to deliver me. It was to Genesee Junction, off Scottsdale Road near where Black Creek feeds into the Genesee River. Starting time was 8 a.m. railroad time, so I calculated that to be, because of the one hour difference, 6 a.m. on our clock. Being a Math major in college, I was absolutely sure of my calculations. Well, needless to say, I went the wrong way on the clock, so wound up waiting two hours to report for work to my new employer.

So I’m happy to live in a part of the world where I don’t have that kind of pressure anymore. Is it “spring forward, fall back” or “fall forward, spring back“; see what I mean? I remember a movie with Jack Oakie (remember him?) where he was trying to stay on the football team and had to pass the history exam. The big question he was having trouble with was when did Columbus discover America. So his friends came up with a rhyme to help him: Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two. So on the day of the test, after hours of practicing the rhyme, the instructor asked the big question: When did Columbus discover America? Proud as a peacock, he answered: Columbus sailed the deep blue sea in fourteen hundred and ninety-three. See what pressure can do to ones mind?