If only Frankfort existed on ‘fast time’

Opinion

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March 21, 2010

By RONNIE ELLIS CNHI The Glasgow Daily Times Sun Mar 21, 2010, 04:07 AM CDT

FRANKFORT — I remember when daylight saving time was novel and controversial. Both sides of my family were mostly farmers and altering the clock was a radical and un-natural concept to them. I thought about that last weekend during a visit to my hometown of Glasgow as we “sprang forward.” Glasgow is in the central time zone, but I’ve become accustomed to an eastern time zone schedule.

Whereas most folks shifted their bodies’ biological clocks and watches forward by an hour last weekend, I had to do it by two. As I “sprang forward,” (on Central Time) when I got there, I was really where I’d begun (on Eastern Time). I didn’t adjust my watch until I left town, which actually put me two hours ahead – or behind from a different perspective – of when I’d gone to sleep the previous evening. It made me think of an odd phrase from my childhood – when those farmer uncles and aunts resisted the innovation of daylight saving time. They were, after all, quintessential Kentuckians when it came to change.

I had an uncle who knew he couldn’t change time. He “got up by the sun, worked by the sun and went to bed by the sun.” He and my aunt refused to change their clocks. My parents often socialized with them, mostly church events and family gatherings, and when they scheduled get-togethers, they used much of the conversation making sure each understood what time to arrive. They had to calibrate where they were in time in order to arrive at the same time. Even with all the calculations, they sometimes didn’t.

But the funniest part was the description of time. People routinely spoke of “fast time” and “slow time,” (as in my aunt asking my mother when they agreed to meet at a specified hour: “Now, is that on slow time or fast time?”) But I couldn’t distinguish its passage from that before the clocks were switched. I remember asking my mother if I were going to get old sooner.

I didn’t realize others knew of this eccentric description of time outside of stubborn, agricultural Barren County until a conversation a couple of years ago with Danny Briscoe, good friend, astute political consultant and observer – and professional smart-aleck.

Beginning this time of the year, Danny unfailingly needles me about “fast time and slow time” a phrase he picked up years ago while visiting my part of the state on a political trip. It absolutely cracks him up, even now. Danny gives new meaning to March Madness, calling me to make sure I’m not confused about the tip time of the University of Kentucky games in the NCAA tournament or to make sure I haven’t overslept, which might cause me to miss that critical budget committee meeting in the capitol annex.

We’ve both concluded, however, that my background living in two dimensions – fast time and slow time – has well prepared me for “Frankfort time,” another surreal chronological perversion. Frankfort time is another form of “slow time” – perhaps a better description would be “late time.” Meetings like Friday’s Senate Transportation Committee, scheduled for “8:30 a.m. sharp,” never commence before 9 a.m.

Of course, as time runs out and the clock winds down in the last days of the General Assembly session, lawmakers will begin their inevitable bickering and playing legislative chicken. That’s when everybody in Frankfort devoutly wishes we lived on “fast time.”

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.

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