Fall back flashback

From an article in the New York Times, February 27, 1967...

...legislators are getting protests from farmers who object to doing chores in the morning darkness, from drive-in movie proprietors, from early-to-bed, early-to-rise communities, from the mothers of children who will not sleep until the sun goes down, and from indignant defenders of "God's time."

State Senator Bobby Rowan of Enigma, GA, rose recently in the Senate chamber and said:

"Not since Biblical times has there been a man who could change sunrise and sunset, but the bureaucrats are attempting to do it."

And Gov. Harold E. Hughes of Iowa, who has promised to veto any legislative action that would keep his state off daylight saving time, was criticized sharply by a rural delegation a short time back.

A spokesman for the group, Hugh A. Vail of Indianola, told the Governor that daylight saving time would weaken are resistance of Iowa's children to Communism.

"A child gets up in the morning under daylight time and cries because he has lost an hour of sleep," Mr. Vail asserted. "A parent has to whip him to get him to go to school. Maybe he has had breakfast and maybe not.

"He whines all day. When he comes home, his parents give him aspirin. We are living in a drug age. The schoolchildren are so busted that they have to have drugs. Then when Communism comes along, what are we going to do?"

(I don't have an actual picture of Mr. Vail, but this is how I imagine him.)

I can only assume that, were we having this debate today, somebody would claim that accepting Daylight Savings Time means the terrorists have already won.

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