ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030069
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
When I realized that we were all lying down again like whipped dogs while Daylight Saving Time was, again, to be forced down our cowardly throats, I started writing like Ernesto:
The old man walked the earth and sensed its renewal beneath his feet and this should have made him happy. But he knew that soon los hombres who are born to make life difficult would put the country on Daylight Saving Time.
And the old man thought, as he had before, that this tampering with the time of the planet is unnatural. Good for the players of the golf, perhaps, but evil for the honest people who sense the miracle of the reviving soil beneath their feet.
"Aiyee," he said to the woman. "Soon las horas de verano will be upon us and we will not know who we are because the sun will be playing tricks on us. It is a cruel thing, this saving of the daylight. Muy estupido."
"Mas o menos," the woman said, hoping to avoid a long discussion. "I have many other things to worry about, mi esposo. I fret little over the station of the sun in the heavens."
"But it is not the natural thing, mujer," the old man said. "If Dios had meant for such a thing to be, he would have written it on the great stone tablet he gave Moses on the mountain."
"Is this lamentation caused by the fact that sun will still be bright when you wish to retire, viejo?" the woman asked. "Perhaps to be made guilty by the sounds of other men at work in the added daylight and confused by it all?"
"You are cruel to say such a thing, mujer," the old man said. "Do I not labor mightily in my own time? But thou art right about the confusion. One does not understand brushing one's teeth when the sun is still high.
"Cannot the soothing la noche come as it was intended? The saving of the daylight is for a time of la guerra. We wage no wars that I know of at this time."
"Whatever," the woman said and she turned to the completion of the loaf of the salmon, which the old man loved in any season.
That is the way it is, the old man thought. I am alone again. My family and amigos all hold this awful corruption of the daylight hours in great esteem. Perhaps, he thought, it was during the time of saving of the daylight that the other viejo fought the great fish and lost.
Then, the smell of the loaf of the salmon came to him and he was glad that it was near six of the clock in any time.
LENGTH: Short : 50 linesby CNB