OPINION: Don’t see the value in changing the clocks

After all, there are 24 hours in a day regardless of when you start counting them. Changing from “Standard Time” to “Savings Time” makes about as much sense as cutting off the end of your blanket and sewing it to the other end in an effort to make the blanket longer. It is a wasted effort and does not make the day one minute longer!

OK. I know that the change gives people more daylight in the evening during long summer days. I suppose it benefits people who want to spend more time playing golf. But if golf or riding your power mower is that important in the summer, just go to work and get off an hour earlier and let the rest of us have a normal day and night.

Government established standard time zones to benefit the railroads. Once the rail stations were linked by telegraph, the old practice of setting each clock by the sun made it difficult for the railroads to have a coordinated schedule. Each station to the east and west would have a different time and that caused a problem with scheduling arrival and departure times. So the nation was divided into four time zones to make scheduling easier.

But those time zones were never accurate. West Georgia should be in the Central Time Zone. Look at the map of time zones and you will see that Georgia’s time zone zigs to the west so that the entire state would be in the same zone. As a result, Atlanta is an hour ahead of Birmingham when they ought to be in the same zone.

There is an old story about grandma’s trip from Atlanta to Birmingham. She asked the ticket seller what time the jet airplane left Atlanta.

“It leaves at 10:50 a.m.,” he answered. “And when will it arrive in Birmingham,” she asked? “It arrives at 10:45,” the ticket seller answered. “Do you want a ticket?”

“No” she answered. “Just show me a safe place to stand. I want to watch that thing take off!”

The clock is valuable for local events. Knowing what time prayer service starts on Wednesday night is important. Knowing when to go to work in the mornings is important. But knowing when a train arrives in Tulsa has little meaning to people in Georgia. Nor is the time to start a golf game so you can finish before sunset important to the majority of Georgians.

There was a time when the farmers went to the fields as sunrise and worked until sunset. The only time marker they cared about was when grandmother rang the dinner bell. The only time of concern to them was local time as determined by the sun.

I know that changing the clock twice a year is not a big deal. I just can’t see the value in it.

Frank Gillispie is founder of The Madison County Journal. His e-mail address is frank@frankgillispie.com. His website can be accessed at http://www.frankgillispie.com/gillispieonline.