Daylight Savings Time
This week we have all lost another hour of sleep, not all of us but most of us. Arizona, a state that I lived in for many years doesn’t participate in such incredibly life altering acts of time consumption, nor does Hawaii. God bless those two states for all they are worth and I miss Arizona, especially this time of the year. Let’s go through the history of this mind-altering tradition of Daylight-Saving Time so here goes;
In an effort to conserve fuel needed to produce electric power, Germany and Austria took time by the forelock, and began saving daylight at 11:00 p.m. on April 30, 1916, by advancing the hands of the clock one hour until the following October. (http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html), go look for yourself if you don’t believe me…
I think it is important at this point, for whatever reason, to note that Arnold Schwarzenegger, (the famous body builder) Adolph Hitler (do you know anyone named Adolph or Hitler these days? Enough said) and Andre Rieu (famous violinist, I have all his stuff in iTunes) are all from Austria. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that important.
This is important though, so try and keep up. I can’t really say or know what a forelock is, nor would I want anyone to grab me by said forelock, but it is important for the good ole USA to not be outdone by anyone from Austria or Germany because our forelocks are bigger than their forelocks. So, when we found out about this audacious measure of governmental intelligence, we took immediate actions and thus…an Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States’ was enacted on March 19, 1918. It both established standard time zones and set summer DST to begin on March 31, 1918.
Now, after the war to end all wars (World War I) was over, folks here in the states got real tired of having their forelocks pulled backwards and forwards every year, so, in 1919 they repealed the forelock adjusting legislation of 1918, in spite of a presidential veto! That means that President Wilson (D) was super proud of his forelock and vetoed the bill but thankfully, his veto was overridden and everyone across the land happily put their forelocks away, and in a show of unity, slept in the next morning. This wasn’t a signal that the folks in 1919 weren’t proud of their forelocks, it just meant that they liked to use their own forelocks when and however they saw fit. It should be noted that these are the same people that ushered in the “roaring 20’s”. I think they were on to something there.
Now, the story should have ended there but of course forelock envy is a real affliction. During the second war to end all wars (World War II) President Roosevelt (D) decided to pull his forelock out of the desk drawer and reinstated DST. The best I can figure is that there were no night field vision glasses during that war, so by exercising his forelock powers, it gave soldiers a few more hours of daylight to shoot at one another. Makes sense to me. Are you keeping up?
Now between 1944 and 1966, things just kinda stayed willy nilly without anyone knowing what time they were supposed to sleep and wake up, it was total chaos. Apparently, there was so much chaos in the country, that all those GI’s now home from the war, just decided to build a bunch of roads, bridges, Dams and buildings, all the while hoping someone from the government would figure out how to get everyone’s forelocks to wake up and go to bed in unison.
Well as it turned out, President Lyndon Johnson (D) who was said to be extremely proud of his forelock, signed the Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S. Code Section 260a) into Public Law 89-387 on April 12, 1966 thus ending the post war forelock chaos.
You’d think the story would end there but sadly it doesn’t. You see, in that 1966 act, they forgot that states like Texas cover 12 different time zones with Houston being in the same time zone with Paris France and El Paso in the same time zone with Eastern Mongolia so they let states decide if they wanted to break up their states into separate time zones. Are you keeping up? Well hang on to your forelock…
So, in 1972, President Nixon(R) and Congress revised the law to provide that, if a state was in two or more time zones, the state could exempt the part of the state that was in one time zone while providing that the part of the state in a different time zone would observe Daylight Saving Time. Thank goodness President Nixon (R) did that because the interstate forelock rivalry was getting pretty rough, tensions were definitely high.
Due to the lack of proper oversight, the clarity provided in 1972 by President Nixon (R) of when you could pull your forelock backwards or forwards was not enough, there were still some major issues left unresolved. You see, they forgot to be specific about the exact time we needed to pull our forelocks backwards and forwards. I understand how he got the nickname Tricky Dick now…
So, to clear up the confusion left by President Nixon (R), the Federal law was amended in 1986 by President Reagan (R) Under legislation enacted in 1986, stating that; daylight Saving Time in the U.S. began at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of April and ended at 2:00 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. This stroke of genius cleared up any lingering confusion, because without it, everyone in states like Texas and Alaska would be grabbing their forelocks at the same time despite being in different time zones. This was appalling and thank goodness the government for the people and by the people stepped in and rectified this legislative blunder.
As a country, we are forever in pursuit of uniformity in everything we do and have, such as income size, intelligence, and of course, forelocks, it seems relative to note that the term “fair share” becomes more understandable. You see we are all very proud of our forelocks, I know I am. The truth is, some of us just make better use of our forelocks than others, so in order to keep us from having forelock envy which leads to pulling our forelocks backwards and forwards at inappropriate times, we all set our forelocks to rise and fall in unison. Makes sense to me…