Country Roads

What are we saving?
Germany proposed it in 1916 to save fuel for waging war during World War I.  Ben Franklin, while America’s Minister to France, circa 1780, suggested it in jest to the Parisians in order to save candles.
It became a part of our clock resetting during the Second World War, thanks to President Roosevelt, with the resulting consequence of a permanent disorientation called Daylight Savings Time.
Nobody was considering the animals and their keepers. Nobody was considering the school children. And, most emphatically, nobody was considering the commuters having to drive to work.
Just when the sun was peeping over the horizon, helping to lift spirits of early risers crawling out of their warm beds, feeling utmost sorrow for themselves; when animal tender and animal were approaching happy syncretization, the former just finishing their morning coffee and putting on warm jackets while the latter were hopping off nighttime perches or steadying and stretching limbs that had been warmly tucked under in beds of straw, it all changed. That stupid clock that stupid Sunday morning reverted everything back to winter darkness.
Nobody needs more war, nor more candles. We need to keep time in real time. These days everybody has some public gripe. One could write a book of encyclopedic proportion on Gripes and Causes. I believe I shall add my voice to a “Ban Daylight Savings Time” movement. Is there a pollster out there who can call me at dinnertime and ask me “some questions that will only take 10 minutes?” How about a few envelopes each week asking for my contribution to the “Ban Daylight Savings” fund, henceforth referred to as BDS?
Can’t you just imagine the caps, tote bags, t-shirts, billboards advertising the BDS cause? Clo the Cow would support us for sure, as she is one of the creatures most affected.
On the other side of the day, it is just as problematic. Some of us, and we are the creatures who are always on time, live by the clock. If it’s 5:30 p.m., it is dinner time. Unfortunately for my children, their parents were raised in households where dinner time was always predictable. For me, in Larkspur, Marin County, it was six o’clock. My mom had dinner ready at six o’clock every day of our lives and looking back I don’t know how she did it, since she was a busy mother of five and she had many interests and activities during her day.
My husband’s childhood home was a cattle ranch in rural Montana and mealtime definitely occurred in a timely fashion, accompanied at supper and dinner (one of those is lunch and the other our dinner and I can’t recall which is which) with the clanging of a large black iron bell affixed to the barn roof.
The result of all this childhood culture was that our family ate dinner at 5:30, not 5:15 and definitely not 5:45. Somebody would get very cranky if his dinner wasn’t on time.
 So, what happens with the hour change that just occurred? We are eating dinner at 4:30. This is ridiculous. Nobody eats dinner at 4:30. And, the animals are getting bedded down a short time thereafter? It doesn’t work. So, the plan which Mr. Franklin had in mind, supposedly, was to stay up later and pick up that extra hour with productive work. That’s all very nice but it doesn’t happen quite so easily in some of us who live by the clock. It will take time to adjust and in a couple of weeks this awkwardness will fade, I suppose, and the subject won’t be revisited until next year.
Meanwhile, if there are any folks who struggle with this hour change as I do, you have my sincere sympathy and understanding. This is why you are out of sorts and out of time. You have lost a whole hour that you cherished in the morning and you have gained a whole hour that you didn’t want in the evening, since the six o’clock news comes on at six o’clock still, which is an hour too soon.
Thankfully, the sheep can baaaaaa if I am confused about their bedtime; the chickens return to their perches when they take note that daylight is just right for settling in and up. I wish I had their adjustability.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.