Uncle I.D. Hated DST
Sam Venable
Department of Irony
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Tennessee Statesman I.D. Beasley |
If you happen to be driving through tiny Dixon Springs, Tennessee, during a certain day in the spring or fall and feel the ground trembling, have no fear. It’s not an earthquake.
Instead, it’s the grave of I.D. Beasley — a former, not to mention formidable — state representative who almost single-handedly made it against the law for Tennesseans to observe Daylight Saving Time. All because he missed his bus.
Tom Jellicorse, a retired Knoxville insurance executive, knows the hilarious story well. It’s part of his family’s history, and he’s happy to share it whenever DST adjustment rolls around.
“Uncle I.D. was my mother’s brother,” Jellicorse told me. “He died in 1956, but he served in the state legislature for 38 years before that. He was a bachelor, and he never learned to drive a car.
“He lived at the Walton Hotel in Carthage. On days when the legislature was in session, he’d catch the bus to Nashville. There, he’d stay at the Andrew Jackson Hotel until it was time to come back to Carthage.
“One morning, Uncle I.D. walked down to the bus station in Carthage, just like always. But the bus had already left. Seems Uncle I.D. had forgotten about the switch to Daylight Saving Time. It made him mad as a hornet.”
For Hizzoner Beasley, this was a call to arms.
A carryover from World War II back then, DST was never popular with farmers. Since Beasley controlled the rural bloc in his part of the state, it was a simple matter for him to draw up a bill abolishing DST and guide it along to final approval.
Eddie Weeks, librarian for the Tennessee General Assembly, did some archival digging for me. Sure enough, he found Beasley’s bill, which was signed into law on Feb. 4, 1949, by Gov. Gordon Browning.
Tennessee hasn’t been the only state wrangling in and out of the DST maze through the years. In fact, there has been such a hodgepodge of local and state laws, this exercise became the time-keeping equivalent of “Who’s on First?”
Weeks directed me to the web site webexhibits.org/daylightsaving that details this regulatory mess. It’s a fascinating read. Consider: “One year, 23 different pairs of DST start and end dates were used in Iowa alone. And on one Ohio-to-West-Virginia bus route, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles!”
Everything changed with the federal Uniform Time Act of 1966. There’s been some tweaking along the line, of course, and a couple of states and U.S. territories still are holdouts. But by and large, the entire country “springs forward” in March and “falls back” in November.
Even if the ghost of I.D. Beasley howls every time it happens.
Sam Venable is an author, comedic entertainer, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. His latest book is “The Joke’s on YOU! (All I Did Was Clean Out My Files).” He may be reached at sam.venable@outlook.com.