Time Change

Has anyone ever figured out how much extra farming the farmers have done with the extra hour?

 

Funny thing is, it was never really for farmers.

It made things harder on them.

8 Things You May Not Know About Daylight Saving Time

5. Daylight saving time in the United States was not intended to benefit farmers, as many people think.
Contrary to popular belief, American farmers did not lobby for daylight saving to have more time to work in the fields; in fact, the agriculture industry was deeply opposed to the time switch when it was first implemented on March 31, 1918, as a wartime measure. The sun, not the clock, dictated farmers’ schedules, so daylight saving was very disruptive. Farmers had to wait an extra hour for dew to evaporate to harvest hay, hired hands worked less since they still left at the same time for dinner and cows weren’t ready to be milked an hour earlier to meet shipping schedules. Agrarian interests led the fight for the 1919 repeal of national daylight saving time, which passed after Congress voted to override President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. Rather than rural interests, it has been urban entities such as retail outlets and recreational businesses that have championed daylight saving over the decades.

One Hundred Years Later, the Madness of Daylight Saving Time Endures | History | Smithsonian Magazine

 

Reading 1910s newspapers in the morgue where each town decided when they’d change the clock independently was wild.

Imagine that chaos.


But I live in a town straddling Ohio and Indiana, so that used to be chaos for half the year, too. Your appointment across town could be an hour apart.

 

My sister used to live in a place like that. Small town, but the time difference could be an issue.

 

My mom grew up in Richmond, Indiana, and my grandparents never lived anywhere else. Visiting in the summer you got all sorts of primetime there!

 

Am I the only one who remembers when they kept daylight savings time year round during the “energy crisis” of the ‘70s? I was in high school, and yes, it was pitch black out when we walked to school. Seemed like a very dangerous situation to me.

 

Driving to work this morning in the daylight was weird. It not even being 6 p.m. and dark outside blows.

 

And my wife had the fun of growing up in one of the few Indiana counties that were on Central time. Indiana was a patchwork quilt of clocks.

 

Falling back is the worst. It's almost 7:30, should be 8:30 and feels like 9:30.

 

MommaQuant: You know it's only 7:30, right?

Me: Fuck!