Marking Time ...

Don’t get me wrong: There aren’t many other places that I would rather live than where I do. I had my fill of city life several years ago, and I don’t think I’d ever go back. My wife and I are both close to our families where we are now, yet not sitting right across the street from them so they could pop in at anytime. The cost of living here, the land we are on and the house we are in are all pretty low in comparison to surrounding areas for the most part, the taxes aren’t backbreaking, and the government generally stays out of your way. I like being able to step outside my door at night to see the moon and stars. My neighbors keep to themselves, and so do I. I can give my wife and my son a good life here.

All told, it’s not nearly as awful a place to live as I thought it was about 10 years ago, when I used words like “backwater,” “ass-backwards,” and “Martintucky” to describe it and swore I was never coming back here to live. We’re all young and ignorant at some point in our lives, and some people carry that youth and ignorance with them well into their 70s, but I’m glad my wife and I settled down here.

That being said, the current Eastern vs. Central time zone debate – the flashpoint of which is in my little county - is a little fascinating and maddening at the same time.

A little backstory:

Martin County has been home to a naval base since World War II; about 5,000 people, both people employed directly by the federal government and contractors like myself, work within Crane’s borders, and a large number of jobs that support Crane’s work (directly, like contractors who aren’t based at Crane, and indirectly, like restaurants and gas stations) rely heavily on the base’s continued existence – annual revenue from the base is around $1 billion.

So, because we have the biggest cash cow in southern Indiana within our borders, we tend to swing a bigger stick somewhat than a economically poor, barely literate county with a population of 10,000 otherwise would … especially in the current time zone debate.

For various reasons (the “farmer’s lobby” being the main culprit, allegedly), the state of Indiana has long been a staunch opponent of Daylight Savings Time, so much that over 80 out of our 92 counties don’t observe it. During the winter months, we are on the same time as New York, Louisville and Cincinnati, but during the summer months, we are on the same time as Chicago and various points west. Confusing? I guess it could be, if you’re not used to it.

One of the things Governor Daniels promised to do when he got into office was to settle the debate once and for all – Daylight Savings Time would be instituted, come hell or high water. The only question that remained was whether the bulk of the state would be in the Eastern time zone or Central time zone.

The governor left the decision up to the individual counties, so Martin County’s commissioners held two public meetings to get a feel for what time zone we should be in. The original debate over what time zone our region should fall into sparked waves of apathy at first – around 70 people combined to attend the two meetings. Where was everyone else?

“I know I was a lazy butt who didn’t get out of the TV room to vote and just
assumed we’d stay on Eastern time,” said Stacy Bryant, a 23-year veteran of
Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and a 13-year resident of Martin
County

(What? Some house have a room where the occupants do nothing but … watch TV?)

Anyway, indifference reigned, even after the Commissioners petitioned the Department of Transportation to put Martin County on Central time. Only after the DOT handed down its decision to lump Martin in with our neighbors to the west and south in the Central time zone while keeping our eastern and northern neighbors on Eastern did it become a lightning rod issue. Various employee organizations at Crane decided to get involved, much to my chagrin.

Why the chagrin? Because it is not right – even for a 900-pound gorilla like Crane, which lies almost entirely within Martin County’s borders – for Crane’s organizations to tell the rest of Martin County what time zone it’s going to be in. You’ve got people who only work in Martin County, and otherwise don’t give a damn about the county the rest of the time, forcing a decision on those of us who *do* live and work here; I have a wife who works in Dubois County, nowhere *near* Crane, and you’re going to make the decision for her? We made our decision last year, and our decision was to move to year-round Central time. This was a Martin County decision, and Martin County’s citizens spoke about it last year, albeit rather indecisively – because Martin County otherwise has zero jurisdiction over the Crane base, and vice versa, Crane employee organizations have no right to make the decision for us.

“But it’ll be easier for the base to be on the same time as Washington D.C.,” the pro-Eastern argument goes.

Of course it will be, because none of that pesky math will be involved – adding one hour to the current time to figure out what time it is in Washington would be a bitch. Remember – a lot of the people at Crane are engineers; they have helped put together smart bombs that can track their target down to the exact millimeter from a floating battleship in the middle of the sea, hundreds of miles away. Yet, 9:15 a.m. + 1 hour = 10:15 a.m. is a concept that renders systems obsolete!

It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

(And, by that logic, the installations at Rock Island and other places in the Central time zone should also move their clocks forward one hour to be on the same time as Washington. Where do you draw the line?)

“But the bulk of the base’s employees live in counties that will be on Eastern time,” another pro-Eastern argument goes.

Is that a math question or a question of convenience? If it’s the former … math!!! If it’s the latter, life is full of inconveniences. I think it’s pretty damned inconvenient to even get up and go to work a lot of mornings. Tough.

Point is, the line was going to fall somewhere, and someone somewhere was going to be pissed off about it and/or screwed by it. Me? I don’t really have a dog in the fight; I was only a fan of Central time solely for the more convenient television hours. Ultimately, I don’t really care where we land – I have a preference that we stay on the same time as Dubois County because of my wife’s job there, but neither of us cared enough to go to the meetings. And if it happens that we end up divided at the Martin-Dubois line, so be it; we’ll suck it up and carry on. (That’s not bad advice for those affected, incidentally. Too much to ask? Probably.)

But I have no use for people who use ignorance and apathy as an excuse, then whine – and that’s what it is: whining – when they wake up and realize that they might be adversely affected by a change. It’s as if a stranger walks up to you and tells you, “OK, I’m going to put this large, pointy stick in your ear. It will puncture your eardrum, give you vertigo and maybe even scramble your brain. Oh, and your silence equals consent!” You don’t say anything, and he indeed puts a large, pointy stick in your ear, puncturing your eardrum, giving you vertigo and maybe even scrambling your brain. You go, “Ow, that hurts!” (Or, possibly, “Arrrwuhngert!”) Seriously - what did you expect?