Changing the Policy on Time

I was recently reading a classic Oregon novel, Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion. This book is like Duck Dynasty meets the Oregon timber industry. I came across a passage that highlighted to me why it’s so hard to get rid of daylight saving time.

“Say, excuse me.” I turned again to the sack across from me. “Could you tell me the time?”

“The time?” His stubble split in a grin. “Golly, fella, we don’t have such a thing as the time. You from outa state, ain’t that so?”

I admitted it and he thrust hands in his pockets and laughed as though they were tickling him in there. “Time, eh? Time? They got the time so fouled up that I guess there doesn’t nobody really know it. You take me,” he offered, leaning the whole prize toward me. “Now you take me. I’m a millworker an’ I work switch shifts, sometimes weekends off, sometimes a day here, a night someplace else, so you’d think that’d be enough of a mess, wouldn’t you? But then they got this time thing and I sometimes work one day standard, the next day daylight. Sometimes even come to work on daylight and go home on standard. Oh boy, time? I tell you, you name it. We got fast time, slow time, daylight time, night time, Pacific time, good time, bad time . . . Yeah, if we Oregonians was hawking time we’d be able to offer some variety! Awfullest mix-up they ever had.”

He laughed and shook his head, looking as though he could not have enjoyed the confusion more. The trouble started, he explained, when the Portland district was legislated daylight time, and the rest of the state standard. “All them dang farmers got together is why daylight got beat for the rest of the state. Danged if I see why a cow can’t learn to get up at a different time just as easy as a man, do you?”

During the ride I managed to find out that the chambers of commerce of other large cities—Salem, Eugene—had decided to follow Portland’s lead because it was better for their business, but the danged mud-balls in the country would have no part of such high-handed dealing with their polled wishes and they continued to do business on standard. So some towns didn’t officially change to daylight but adopted what they called fast time, to be used only during the week. Other towns used daylight only during store hours. “Anyway, what it comes down to is nobody in the whole danged all-fired state knowin’ what time it is. Don’t that take all?” I joined him in his laughter, then settled back to my window, pleased that the whole danged all-fired state was as ignorant of the time of day as I was; like brother Hank signing his name in capitals, it fit.

This passage highlighted for me that deciding what the policy on time will be intuitively takes a lot of coordination across several jurisdictions. Then I paused and sensed this passage might have some metaphorical value of a culture adrift, when radical progressive transformation clefts social cohesion.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.

The post Changing the Policy on Time first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.