Greg Bean
Coda
When kids are little, they figure their parents know everything. Most parents say that stage usually lasts until a couple of years before puberty, when kids decide their parents know absolutely nothing.
I think it lasts until the kids ask the one question for which almost no parent has a decent answer, and that question has nothing to do with the birds and bees. That question is, “Why do we have daylight-saving time?”
When asking that question drew blank stares from both my mother and my father, who until that time had been able to explain anything — including the question about why we have that little dimple in our upper lips (angel kisses) — I went to the wisest man I knew, my grandfather. He knew everything, I reasoned, largely because of his advanced age (at that time he was 51, old enough, I imagined, to have traveled in a covered wagon). And as I had suspected, he had a ready answer.
“It’s because of the farmers,” he said. “We move the clocks ahead in the spring to give them an extra hour in the field.”
That made pretty good sense (we lived in Wyoming — there were lots of farmers and ranchers around), and I went with that explanation until the first of my own children was old enough to ask the question. I told him about the farmers.
“But we live in a suburb on the East Coast,” my son said. “We don’t even know any real farmers out here.”
At that moment, I realized I didn’t really have a clue. For a lark, I went down to a local second-grade class and asked the students where that extra hour had gone (it was October, and we’d just changed our clocks back), so I could write a column about it.
“The government took it,” one kid said. “My dad says the government takes everything that isn’t nailed down.”
“My mom took it,” a little girl said. “She wants us in bed a little earlier, so she can get some peace and quiet for a change.”
“Ralphie Spozzioli took it,” another kid said. “He’s got my lunch money, too.”
It was a real laugh riot until one of the kids asked me where that hour went.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I used to think farmers took it, but now I’m not so sure.”
Since then, I’ve pretty much gone along in ignorant bliss, springing forward, falling back, and never asking why. Until last week, when the U.S. House of Representatives approved an energy bill that, among many other things — including drilling the Alaskan wilderness — would extend daylight-saving time from the first Sunday in March to the last Sunday in November.
Why are they doing that, I wondered? I don’t really understand the explanation that lengthening the days saves electricity if people don’t turn all their stuff on until an hour later at night. Don’t they make up for it by turning their stuff on earlier in the morning, when it’s still dark out?
In a newspaper office, you can usually find an answer to most questions, just by asking around. So I asked nearly everyone I came in contact with why we have DST.
Nobody knew.
“It’s for the farmers,” several people said.
“Is this a trick question?” one young reporter asked. It always makes her nervous when an editor starts acting eccentric.
I called my wife, who usually knows all there is to know.
“It’s to extend time for farmers in the field,” she said.
Hoo-ha! Wrong!
Here’s the real, although abbreviated, skinny on daylight-saving time.
According to information from the Internet, the major source of esoteric knowledge for lazy people these days, the concept of daylight-saving time was first put forward in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin while he was living in Paris and decided if there was more daylight, he wouldn’t have to buy as many candles. He reasoned that if all Paris went along with his idea, there’d be a huge savings in wax, although I’m a little fuzzy on his math. The notion percolated around Europe for the next 133 years, when it was finally adopted as law in most countries in 1916-1917. In America, it was adopted in 1918-1919 but vetoed the very next year and made a local option.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt reinstituted DST as an energy-saving measure during World War II, but it wasn’t made a national law until 1966, except in those places that decided to exempt themselves. States that sprawled over two time zones and states that are just generally cranky can opt out. That’s why Indiana stays on Eastern Standard Time all year long and why Hawaii stays on whatever they call time out there.
It’s why Arizona never goes on DST and why my stepfather, who lives in Phoenix, is sometimes a little cross when I call him at 9:30 on Sunday morning because I’ve forgotten it’s only 6:30 in the desert. In America, each time zone changes at a different time when DST adjustments are made. In Europe, they do it all at once.
Lots of farmers, it turns out, don’t like DST at all, because their schedules are tied to the sunrise and not the clock. Chickens, after all, don’t observe DST.
Still, in America, the government figures DST saves about 1 percent of our electricity consumption a day. In New Zealand, it saves between 3.5 percent and 5 percent a day. I’m not sure why that is so, but it may be because people in New Zealand aren’t staying up late to watch Jay Leno.
And that adds up to the thousands, or millions, of barrels of oil we’ll eventually save (Oil? I thought we were trying to save electricity!) by extending DST an extra couple of months.
I hope that clears everything up.
As long as it means I’ll be paying less than $3 for a gallon of gasoline, I guess I’m in favor of this idea. But I have one more question. If we’ll save so much energy by extending DST for two months, why don’t we just jump right in and have it all year long?
“The farmers wouldn’t like it,” one newsroom colleague said.
Considering the chickens, I guess that sounds about right.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.