RIVER CITY JOURNAL: IT'S TIME TO BELLYACHE ABOUT CST AGAIN, SO SIT BACK AND ENJOY

Thank goodness the days are getting longer. Now it's not dark when I go to work and come home. Look! Is that grass in front of my house?

If any of you have been paying attention, you already know what I think about switching back and forth from Central Standard Time to Daylight-saving Time.

I think if God had intended for us to muck around with our clocks twice a year he wouldn't have created microwaves and VCRs.

Do you realize how many remotes it takes to change the time on the TV, VCR and CD player? Of course you do. You know what I'm talking about.

And our microwave is one of those where you use the same button for scorching leftovers as you do for resetting the clock. Is this easy or logical? No. Which is just one more good reason to loathe whoever it was who thought it would be nifty to lose an hour here or gain an hour there every year.

Here's what I hate most about CST: It's dark when I go to work, and it's dark when I go home from work.

Here's what I hate most about DST: It doesn't last all year.

When our pioneer mothers and fathers were carving fields out of this great land so the treeless landscape could someday be converted into subdivisions and parking lots, I doubt they ever thought about changing the clocks so they could have an extra evening hour to plow or milk cows.

Here's one conversation I guarantee never happened:

Maude: Did you get the south 40 plowed?

Zeke: Nah, it got dark.

Maude: You know, if we set the clocks forward every spring, we would have an extra hour of daylight, and you could get the plowing done and I could can another bushel of string beans and have a couple of babies before it gets plumb dark.

Zeke: Hush up! Or somebody will be writing a newspaper column about you in the 21st century.

Nosiree. I think Maude and Zeke got up with the sun and went to bed when it got dark. Year around. They didn't give a hoot about who wanted to be a millionaire or which antacid worked the fastest. They just wanted to wake up alive with food to put on the table and a roof that didn't leak.

They didn't want much, least of all a digital clock.

OK. I think I'm through with my midwinter rant. I know I feel a lot better.

Now for the good news.

February is here, which means the days are getting noticeably longer. When I'm munching my Cheerios, the first hint of daylight comes through the magnificent poplar tree across the street, the one with the big hornet nest hanging over the pavement like a bomb waiting to be dropped on an unsuspecting target (that would be me) someday.

And the great horned owl, who keeps the neighborhood squirrels and cats in check during these dark months, is hoot-hoot-hooting a little earlier and a little later each day.

These are good signs.

Finally, here's an idea you might want to consider:

When April 2 rolls around, announce to anyone who will listen that this is the last time you're going to reset your clock.

Do like I do. There's a clock on my office wall that hasn't been set since 1995. Better than that, the batteries in the clock went dead at least two years ago, and I haven't bothered to put in new ones.

You know what? The world still twirls in its orbit.

A lot of folks come in and say, "Joe, your clock is wrong."

To which I reply, "It's that time somewhere in the world, and that's good enough for me."

Or they say, "Ohmygosh! Is that the time?"

And I say, "Yep, sure is."

See. Time doesn't have to be complicated. It only gets balled up when we let flashing digital numerals and CST and DST rule our lives.

It ought to be the other way around. I mean it.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.