Permanent Daylight Savings Time or Tulsa Time?
Dr. Glenn Mollette
We have been seeing and hearing news about the possibility of permanent daylight savings time. Will this work better for you?
There is a song called “Tulsa Time”. In the song, Don Williams sings about living on Tulsa Time. When he arrived in California, nobody wanted him in the movies and no one would sing his songs so he decided he would set his watch back to it and go on back to Tulsa time.
There are many people who want to keep their watches set on Daylight Savings Time. They don’t want to go back to Tulsa Time or set their watch back one hour in early November.
Many Americans don’t like leaving work in the dark. They leave work in the dark and arrive home for a very long evening. They start quoting “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” highlighting the line in the poem that reads, “Ma and I had had just settled down for a long winter’s nap.” The long winter’s nap starts at about 4:20 PM in the afternoon when darkness sets in many parts of the Central Time Zone. It’s different for everyone, but darkness comes very early in December and the first couple of weeks in January. The hours of daylight are simply much shorter from November until the time changes back in early March.
One problem with making DST permanent is a very long, dark morning. In the Eastern Time Zone, there will be some areas where it will be almost 9:00 AM before daylight breaks. In the song title, “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” the sun already doesn’t break until about 10:00 in the morning. This will be very difficult on the senior adults who want to be at Walmart by 5:00 AM. Many seniors don’t drive in the dark. This means Walmart will be dead until much later in the morning. In some parts of Indiana, daybreak will be at about 8:00 AM. This is a far cry from June and July when it is very light in the morning by 5:10 AM or so.
Many of us would just as soon stay with the time changes. It gives us something to gripe about or to debate twice each year.
Something we ought to seriously think about are the school kids who catch the bus every morning. The potential danger to little children standing on the road waiting for a bus to pull up is something to consider. If it is dark, it presents a more dangerous scenario for everyone. Any change is not worth endangering one child. Maybe we should simply start school later and have one less hour of school time. Most children and staff are beat by the end of the day. Maybe the kids’ attention span would be a little better if they weren’t required to sit for such a long day.
We will soon find out which time we will be living in. Will it be Daylight Savings Time or Tulsa Time?
Dr. Glenn Mollette is the author of 15 books. He is a graduate of Georgetown College, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville Kentucky, Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, Kentucky, and is the founder of Newburgh Theological Seminary, Newburgh, Indiana. His column is published in over 600 media outlets nationally.
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