RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THIS IS THE LAST DST COLUMN I'LL EVER WRITE. I MEAN IT...

As you've probably figured out by now, we recently had to change all the clocks.

Again.

My wife says I whine too much about switching to and from daylight-saving time. She says I ought to give it a rest.

You already know I'm an obedient person. I always listen to my wife.

And she will be tickled to find out I'm not ever going to write another column about springing forward and falling back, or about the increasing numbers of deaths caused by high blood pressure brought on by climbing on rickety stools to reach clocks that are too high on the wall anyway, or about all the sunbeams we could save in the winter and put in the light bank if we didn't switch our clocks in October.

(Honest, I thought that last one might win my wife over. I thought my penny-pinching spouse might like to squeeze a few more hours of precious daylight into a passbook account full of sunshine. So far it hasn't worked.)

So there won't be any more columns from me about why God himself did not see any good reason to muck around with clocks when he was creating our universe. For the Almighty, Day and Night were good enough.

Nope. No more DST columns. Nary a one. Ever again. Never.

Right after this one.

I am going to use this final, never-to-be-repeated column on daylight-saving time much the way I figure a condemned man chooses his last meal. I intend to make it meaty with a sweet confection at the end. So here goes:

What I am about to tell you is the meaty part.

We Americans are the product of sterner ancestors who had well-developed backbones. I cannot imagine, not even in the wildest stretch of imagination, that those who heard the clarion call of Paul Revere would have, not for a moment, allowed the soon-to-be-formed government to dictate whether you ate your noonday meal at 12 o'clock or 11 a.m. DST.

Nope. I don't think it would have happened.

As a matter of fact, I think if any upstart in the nascent federal government had found time to mess around with time, he would have been summarily sacked for idleness which, as anyone knows, is a sin equal to sloth, gluttony and parking in handicapped spaces.

Our forebears would have had the guts to stand up to the time czars who disrupt our lives twice a year for no good reason. They would have told bureaucrats who think there is something special about the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October exactly where to go, if you get my drift.

Nosiree.

I'd like to think that Americans in this new millennium have an opportunity to restore a bit of dignity and righteousness to the office of citizen. As the foot soldiers of democracy, we are called to an act of conscience. We are perched on the brink of emancipation from prisons ruled by tick-tock wardens. We are, as free and patriotic soulmates, obliged to do the right thing, timewise.

My fellow Americans, I implore you to take the Pledge for Free Time:

On my honor

I solemnly vow

never to reset

another clock

so long as

I breathe the air

of an unfettered nation

whose very foundation

rests on the right

to control

both our destiny

and our time.

So help me God.

This means, kind and gentle readers, that you never have to turn back your clock again. Come autumn, you can revel in the fact that only wimps will pay any attention whatsoever to the last Sunday in October.

Can you do this? Will you do this?

Will you join in my crusade?

(It would be appropriate here to hum that song from "Les Miserables.")

There. I've said my piece.

Which will come as sweet news to my wife.

That's the confection part.

See you later. Whenever that is.