Whose Bright Idea Was Daylight Savings Time?

Kicking and screaming, I set our clocks ahead one hour Saturday night before turning in for the evening.
Two things I equally detest: Setting clocks ahead one hour and paying taxes.
I grudgingly do the latter because I hate getting gut-wrenching brown envelopes from the Internal Revenue Service that do not contain checks.
I have toyed with not adhering to the former, since I don’t believe there is a law dictating the movement of one’s personal time-keep devices. I find the time just fine without meddling.
For full disclosure, I wear no watch. I never had much luck with watches. They would work for a while, then quit. I tried pocket watches for a while. They sold in hardware stores, and sold for about $5 for a glow-in-the-dark model. When he price went up, that ended my buying sprees.
They were indestructible, but when they quit, that was it. No repairs were necessary, just toss and buy a new one.
Children, animals and grumpy people never take kindly to time changes. They get all out of sorts for a couple of weeks. What would happen if we didn’t advance the hour, and lived pleasantly on Eastern Standard Time? Wouldn’t you like to try it, just once, to see how much of a thrill it would be do live out of synch with the rest of the world?
Certainly, news junkies would suffer, since they might miss the evening news programs. Life would continue since there are 24-hour news shows that pour a steady stream of schlock that passes for news, albeit it snippets from unimportant people and places.
Some modern gadgets have removed the human factor from time changes. They come, factory installed, with internal devices that know when time hops ahead and falls back.
Since VCR machines have largely fallen out of favor, and we ditched ours a while back, there is no longer that embarrassing dilemma twice a year. We adults found ourselves, from time to time, having to ask the younger generation how it was done. How insensitive!
Now that days are longer, it’s possible to actually do something after dinner other than flop in the easy chair and read through catalogs to spend money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need.
For some foolish reason, I keep thinking THIS will be the year I plant a garden. That way, I could putter in the evening, and something useful would come of it in late August.
Well, come to think of it, maybe not a complete garden, maybe just tomatoes. Not many, maybe just a couple of plants. Why? To me, tomato plants represent spring. They also remind me of my dad, who faithfully started tomatoes from seed about this time of year. The sun porch was where his plants spent their infancy.
Between his touch, faithful weeding and watering, he always had a nice crop to enjoy. I keep thinking, that’s what I want to do. But then come the excuses and reality sets in.
Gathering all the planting stuff, peat pots and soil, seeds and the cold frame, is easy and fun to do. Early watering and raising the tiny plants is reassuring, it makes me grateful to be alive in a world that regenerates.
Even setting out the young plants is heartening. Then comes the arduous part. Spring turns to summer. Weeds grow, bugs attack.
If all that is properly taken care of, and watering is still done in the heat of summer, there is that disheartening moment of truth.
A beautiful red tomato is ripening. We mentally taste it sliced and carefully placed between pieces of white bread with mayonnaise, strips of bacon and leaves of lettuce (store bought is acceptable). Then, it’s plucked and…it’s all black underneath.
Or, on the last possible picking day, an ugly worm digs in and makes a meal of that tomato.
Having written that, there is no real need for me to plant a garden. It would be foolish, a waste of precious time and money. So, here I am, stuck in a time I did not ask for, with daylight that declares, subliminally at least, “Get off your lazy duff and DO something productive!”
It’s too early to mow the lawn, the majority of grass is still brown, and won’t return until mid April.
Maybe I should grab another seed catalog, and look for peas.
Why peas? Well, grab a couple of packs and get out there, turn the cold ground and take part in the annual ritual many old-timers thought of as a rite of spring: Peas on St. Patrick’s Day.
Chances are they’ll grow, and before the weather turns hot and bugs get the upper hand, you’ll have picked your crop of peas.
In the evening, after dinner, you can drink in the extra daylight, chat with neighbors you haven’t seen since Labor Day, check your roof to see how it made it through the winter, and count the days until Nov. 1, when, at 2 a.m., we will “Fall Back” into dear, sweet, old Eastern Standard Time. That time we never should have left in the first place.