When I was a little boy we had three ways of knowing what time it was. There was the kitchen clock, which had to be wound every day and ticked steadily through day and night. There was something reassuring about that sound; I knew I could count on that clock as long as it kept ticking. Another source,, and, in my young boy's mind, the most reliable, was my dad's railroad watch, which he carried in his vest. The Union Pacific required all railroad men to carry watches at all times and these watches were checked monthly at Pear's Jewelry, the official site for keeping the watches accurate. When Dad was "in" (at home) I always went to him to find out what time it was. But much of the time Dad was "out" (working). At those times I had one more reliable source; I would call "central" (the telephone operator) and say "Time please." . In just a few moments a pleasant female voice would say "At the tone, the time will be ..." The correct time was announced, followed by a solemn tone. You could set your alarm clock by that.
Of course that was before some government agency, with too much time on their hands, came up with the inane idea that we should all set all our clocks ahead one hour in the spring , then set them back to the "real time" in the fall. Life has never been the same since.
Friday night I dutifully followed orders: I set our clocks back. Here's what that involved.
Saturday morning I woke up to the realization that I had (pardon the pun) jumped the clock. We were to set our clocks back on Saturday night. I wasn't about to go through all that again, so we lived in a sort of twilight zone the rest of the day, and I kept wondering if we had really gained another hour of sleep, and if we had, was there some way we could gain another hour?
Of course no two clocks agree with each other to any reliable degree, so I rely exclusively on the one in the first picture, which, to be honest, I didn't have to set. In a way I don't fully understand, but which I count among my blessings, an atomic clock somewhere in the world sets it for me and keeps it accurate to the very second.
If you counted the pictures, you came up with fifteen. That doesn't include re-setting the date and time on the answering machines on three of our telephones, which I may never get around to doing because we don't get enough messages to make it worth the bother.
Lest you think we are way overloaded with ways to find out what time it is, I refer you to another member of our expanded family who had 19 clocks to set back.
Wasn't life great when you could just call "Central" and ask her?
