Jack Van Horn, the designated liturgist at church Sunday, reminded all of us parishioners to “meet and greet the person in your pew,” then added, “if there is someone there to greet.”
Clearly he was referring to the paucity of congregants, the bulk of whom blame the time change. Some of us lost an hour of sleep Sunday when we converted to Daylight Saving Time; some went ahead and re-found that hour and wondered where everybody had gone when they arrived at church, or some other function.
Naturally, people blame their lateness on the time change, but do those people who show up an hour late for work ever appear an hour early at the other end of the calendar?
Daylight Saving (note: there’s no “s” at the end of “saving” — it’s not like a savings bank) Time is a great innovation for as long as it lasts. I like it, as it gives us a chance to ride bikes, fire up our barbecue pits and generally socialize more. I wish retail stores would adjust to the time change as well, perhaps opening an hour later and staying open a while longer.
The biggest complainers of the time change used to be managers of drive-in theaters and fast-food places, particularly in towns with a curfew. They’d argue that they’d literally lose an hour of business unless the city dads changed the terms of curfew.
In the Trujillo household, DST and the return to standard time become periods in which my wife Bonnie keeps asking, “What time is it?” I’ll respond that it’s, say, 8 a.m. “No, but what time is it really?” Well, that “really” really is ambiguous. Does she mean the time she’s gotten used to for the last six months, or the new time? And rather than make any changes, she leaves the car radio as is, mentally adding or subtracting an hour as needed. She rationalizes, “It’s gonna change back in six months anyway.”
Although there were many starts to DST, it officially began in 1945, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a help to farmers who needed an extra hour of daylight to work their fields. The extra hour is not a gift, however, merely delayed compensation for rising an hour earlier.
But yet, some see the practice as a Communist plot. Watch for fear-mongers warning that the extra hour of daylight will contribute to global warming. Or even dry out the crops.
It was pure coincidence that as we Las Vegans began advancing our clocks at 2 a.m.
Sunday, Mother Nature was whipping up a snowstorm, the likes of which many will remember. At the highest point on our porch, we had a 14-inch measurement, and Monday morning, we’ve heard several explosions wrought by snow sliding from the Pro-Paneled roofs.
Monday’s paper calls this latest assault the 18th snowfall of the season. Though I’m not keeping score, I’m reminded of the two-feet-in-two-weeks Dr. Zhivago-type snowfall we had beginning on March 27, 1973. So deep was the snow that even some National Guard heavy-duty military equipment, considered the ultimate in retaining traction, got buried in the snow.
For the jillionth time this season, snow has caused school delays and closings. Strange, but I simply don’t recall canceling school during my youth. That just didn’t happen. Of course, on occasion, following a two-foot snowfall, Liz Saykally, a student helper for our principal Sister Mary Schweren Bestrafung, would enter our room to announce “double-session,” which meant we’d skip lunch and go home at 1.
Of course, any mention of the way things were gets lost on my own offspring. By the time I’ve uttered the opening five words of my reminiscences, “When I was your age,” one of the three sons invariably cuts in with, “Yes, Dad, we know: you walked five miles to school, in deep snow, uphill both ways.
My grandchildren can guess my tune in as few as three words. If I say, “When I was,” they complete my thought.
So what will these doubters be telling their own school-age children and grandchildren years hence? Will they specifically remember this year, 2010, when a huge snowfall arrived on the day DST kicked in? Will they tell their descendants of the many missed school days and two-hour delays?
Ah, yes, they’ll get theirs. The stories my sons and grandchildren will pass on probably will be met with the same derision they bestowed on us oldsters. But there might also be a few variations, to accommodate for technology and progress.
So instead of walking in deep snow, today’s children will tell of riding all the way to school in snow just as deep. They’ll revel my great- and great-great-grandkids with tales of how they once were in such a rush that they forgot their cell phone, putting them into a black hole the entire school day.
Given the frequency of calling off school nowadays, today’s youth will tell tomorrow’s offspring of having to walk all 20 feet to the bus, and do the same on the return trip.
And some grandchild might even dig out a pair of galoshes Bonnie or I wore way back in the 1900s. They could have a blast — by having their friends guess the function of those strange-looking shoe-like thingees they found in our closet.