They say the premise of daylight savings time is simple … that is the same “they” that did something with my hour. The idea is that in the wintertime, without daylight savings time, a person who goes to work at 8:00 am will be going to work in the dark. In the summer, however, the same person will have wasted a couple of good hours of daylight by sleeping or brushing teeth, you know, silly things like that. So why do we inflict this punishment on ourselves twice each year?

Originally folks thought they could get more leisure time … that is good. But others looked at it as an opportunity to get more work out of you … that’s bad. The first nation to adopt this unique form of torture was the Kaiser’s Germany in World War I. That alone should have told us something about the evil of it.

The rational opposition was obvious: Why should we change our clocks when all we have to do to gain those extra hours is to get up early in the morning?

Farmers are opposed to it more than most. That is because the animals don’t have clocks. They expect to be fed and milked and watered or whatever on their schedule, not on yours.

I always liked the story of the young farm boy who had gone off to A&M and studied all the new methods. At Christmas time he came home and told his daddy all about the new things like automatic milking machines and explained how much time he could save. His dad listened patiently and then shook his head and said, "But son, time don’t mean much to cows."

Some folks oppose the change on religious grounds. It is wrong, they say, to mess with God’s time. As though the movement of time was ordained by God himself and untouchable by common man. So it is, I suppose, but if we go by God’s time the time at every point of latitude would be minutely different. Somehow I think God prefers a 24-hour clock to changing time zones from one side of town to another.

The measurement of time is our creation anyway. It was not until the Industrial Revolution that any one cared much what time it was. You just went by the sun in he daytime and by the stars at night, in other words you made an educated guess and that was close enough.

I will take my hour and be glad for it. My clocks are all run back. I just can’t believe it is the end of October all ready.

I will try to be on time to church this morning. I hope to see you there.