DONNIE JOHNSTON: Thank Goodness We are Back in Daylight Savings Time
Sunset is later, and potatoes and beets are in the ground, but consistently warm days are still a ways away.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
Thank goodness we are back in Daylight Saving Time.
When I was a kid growing up in the country, the old folks called it “fast time” and Standard Time was “old time.”
Back then, the country did not shift to Daylight Saving Time as a whole. Rather, the decision was left up to the individual states.
I first realized this when my uncle and I would listen to baseball games on the radio and, although both teams were in the same time zone, the Cincinnati Reds would come on an hour later than the Baltimore games. Ohio remained on Standard Time while Maryland changed to Daylight Saving Time.
But while Ohio remained on Standard time, Kentucky, right across the Ohio River, went on “fast” time. It was all very confusing, especially for train and airline schedules.
Daylight Saving Time was made for people like me. I am not a morning person and I have no interest in what goes on before 8 a.m. I want those late afternoons and evenings, when the sun goes down at 8:30 p.m. and there is some light until almost 10 p.m.
The only bad part is that the baseball games come on TV before the sun goes down and I either must quit my farmwork early or miss the first couple of innings. Baseball or no, there are very few summer evenings when I come inside before dark.
Sunday was the only 23-hour day of the year, and it was hard to get up that first morning. After that, however, my body shifts seamlessly into Daylight Saving Time. Love it.
A word of warning. I know the past couple of days have been beautiful, but don’t get used to 75-degree weather. March is the worst month of the year and it has no redeeming qualities. It can be hot one day and freezing the next as summer battles to take the reins from winter.
Friday I left my home at one in the afternoon and it was 55 degrees and foggy. Thirty miles south it was 80 degrees and sunny, and by the time I got to Lynchburg, two hours away, it was 85 degrees. That’s March. You think winter is gone when February exits, but it ain’t so. As I say every year, it will not get warm and stay warm until May 20. And you can put that in the bank.
Some of us remember that on this date in 1962 there was three feet of snow on the ground. That March 5-7 storm was a doozie, power out for as long as two weeks and no school for about 10 days. Then, the first day back at school, we again got out early. It was 75 degrees and the snow was melting so fast that the creeks were up so buses couldn’t travel back roads.
But there are signs of spring starting to show up. There are sprigs of green grass in my yard and I can sit here and see some red buds on the maple trees. We will get there eventually.
I finally got my potatoes and beets planted Monday, about a week later than most years. The earliest I have ever planted these crops is February 20. Onions and cabbage still to go.
On another subject, what’s with these ladybugs? Usually, those things are gone by November but this winter they didn’t go away. I don’t ever remember them being around in March. Now I have to sweep them up once or twice a day. And exterminators say they are almost impossible to eradicate.
On a more serious note, are we on the verge of having gas lines like we had in the 1970s? Crude oil prices topping $100 a barrel and gas already over $4 a gallon in Texas.
Will gas shortages be next? Some of us remember lines around the corner at gas stations and odd and even day gas fill-ups. Every day I keep looking for the $1.80 a gallon gas the MAGA followers promised me.
And Dow 50,000 disappeared in a hurry.
The Republicans wanted Trump. Well, they got him.
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