Funny story about Daylight Savings time. [View All]

Miz t.'s Uncle Bert was a rice farmer in a tiny crossroads town in southern Louisiana. Almost everything he did was dictated by the lunar cycle. When to plant, when to harvest, when to butcher a hog, even when to get a haircut.

"If you get your haircut at a new moon, it don't grow back as fast."
Uncle Bert was very thrifty.

He was a lifelong bachelor. After his mama died, he did his own cooking. I'd call it 'rudimentary'.

We were on the way to Texas one summer and would be passing near his farm. Miz t. called him and said we'd like to stop in for a short visit.
"We'll bring lunch. How does fried chicken sound?"
"That sounds real good."

We knew that Bert ate his lunch at precisely the stroke of noon, EVERY day. We're were running a tad behind schedule and knew there'd be hell to pay if we weren't at Bert's by noon. Keeping an eye out for state troopers, I goosed it up to 80 and we pulled into the farmyard a few minutes before noon.
whew

Bert met us at the back door (NOBODY uses the front door) and we put the chicken & trimmings on the kitchen table. Bert walked on through to the living room. We sat down and started catching up on family news and such.

I started getting a little hungry and looked at my watch.
12:30
Bert was in his 80s, so maybe he wasn't keeping strictly to his schedule.
Anyway, I said "Anybody getting hungry?"
Bert pulled his railroad watch from the top pocket of his bibb overalls.
"It ain't noon yet. 'Nuther 30 minutes."
And it dawned on me.
Bert didn't DO Daylight Savings.
That was some tom fool gummint invention.
The time was the time, and that don't change summer and winter.
We chatted for another half hour.