Changing Times

Well it’s been about three days since the clocks got set back an hour; part of that 'ol fall back routine we do every year about this time, when Daylight Savings Time ends. And that "extra hour" of sleep we got Sunday morning?  Well it was nice at the time. But nearly 96 hours into the season of shortened days, my internal clock has re-synced to Standard Time.  6 a.m. is again 6 a.m. Bleh!

However, as with all things in nature, there's always balance, and in March we'll once more do the spring forward thing. More daylight, longer days. Yay!

For the time being though, I frankly don’t care very much for these sunlight truncated days. I take no pleasure in seeing the sun go down around 5:00 now. And since I tend to thrive with more daylight than less, it's really going to suck in December, when it'll be getting dark closer to 4:30 than 5. 

See? I'm whining about it already.

And when I think about it, the only benefit I ever got out of this silly yearly ritual happened many “fall-backs” ago. It was October 1980 and I’d recently started working at 50, 000 watt KGA in Spokane. But as a new hire, when it came to the more ‘plum’ on-air assignments I was still at the bottom of the totem pole. So, for the first several months and, I worked a lot of graveyard shifts, particularly on the weekends.

Though I’d eventually be promoted to the overnight shift full time during the work week, this was my first time working overnights and doing it only on a part time basis Saturday and Sunday gnawed at me physically and mentally. It took me a while to adjust to the irregular and crazy hours. Until I was doing it on a regular basis, as I worked through the weekends during the last quarter of 1980 I was either feeling sick, getting sick or really sick; or just really, really tired. Or all of the above.

But that’s where I was- working the graveyard shift on KGA on the Sunday morning when Daylight Savings Time ended.  It was only the second weekend I’d pulled a graveyard shift and the first time I’d ever been awake though the time change. However, never one to function much past the level of dullard during broad daylight, the middle of the night clock alteration was asking a lot of my semi-cognizant brain.

When the ABC News came on at 2:00, before taking my caffeine break-as I usually did- I was assigned an extra task. Instead of refilling my coffee cup I was supposed to reset all the clocks in the programming wing, starting with the on-air studio. Tom Newman, the program director, left typewritten instructions attached to the program log so I wouldn’t forget. He wrote that it was critical to get it done during the newscast because when I came back on at 2:05, it wouldn’t be; it’d be 1:05. “If we’re going to be a radio station”, he went on, “one thing the public should be able to count on when they tune in, is that we’re at least giving them the correct time”.

So, as the news update was on, I had to climb a step ladder and set the studio Seth Thomas back to 1:00 again. It took nearly the entire five minutes, too because the clock face had to be taken off with a screwdriver, I dropped one of the screws, had to get off the ladder and find it, then I set the clock ahead an hour instead of back. Fortunately I noticed that glaring mistake before I screwed the clock face back on. Finally, with 15 seconds to spare the clock in the on-air studio was set to the correct time.

It was hard to reconcile how a five minute network newscast, which started at 2:00, could finish at 1:05.  It didn't make a lot of sense. Of course, I hadn’t been working graveyard for very long yet, so at 2:00 in the morning very little still made sense to me. I remember in college I’d been up at that hour, too, and though it was almost always a time of day lost in the Twilight Zone, too, at least I remember I was having fun. This wasn’t fun, it was work. So in this case, I’m chalking up the temporary confusion to the "magic of radio".

However, as I continued to work those long overnight ungodly hours, I knew people who knew people who, if needed in order to stay awake, could ‘loan’ me some ‘medicine’. Pep pills. Geenies. You name it, I knew people who had it. Amphetamines, the breakfast of champions- or night shift employees. (One guy seemed to always have a jar full of 'em). I would eventually resort to these medicinal aids often; however that night, for the record, I was flying under my own power, was fully conscious and over the course of the next half hour, during songs, managed to correctly calibrate and convert all relevant time pieces on the programming side of the building to Pacific Standard Time.

My shift was scheduled from midnight to 6 a.m. But with the two 1:00 hours, I actually worked 7 hours that Sunday morning instead of 6. So there was an extra 4 bucks in my paycheck that week. How 'bout that? Four whole dollars an hour! I had no idea that was coming, although I have no idea why I thought that either. Still a little naïve about how the world worked, I just assumed I’d get paid for the scheduled six hours and call it a day. Silly me, though- I did work 7 hours, and KGA paid me for it.

Ah, but when I worked the same shift in the spring, nature evened things out- for me and the radio station. When the studio clock struck 2 that Sunday morning, this time Tom’s instructions were to advance it an hour. From 2 to 3 a.m. Meaning, I only worked 5 hours that day and that too showed up in my next pay check. Actually, it didn't. They paid me for my time- which was five hours. I have no idea why that didn’t surprise me either. However, I think I was on speed that night. So for now, let’s just say it wasn’t my naiveté this time; it was the drugs. Works for me.

As a sun-worshiper, though- not to mention a struggling-to make ends meet 20-something- I suddenly didn't care about the extra daylight anymore. I just wanted my friggin' 4 bucks back!