I remember a time when we never had to change our clocks according to the seasons. I also remember the time when the temporary edict to change our clocks, in order to take full advantage of the changes in seasonal daylight, went into effect. I think we are long overdue to eliminate 'Daylight Savings Time'.

It's really very simple: Hoosiers never change their clocks. Never. But to the rest of the country, they always seem to be an hour off for at least half the year. Since they never change, most of the state is in the Eastern Time Zone, so they are the same as New York, for instance. But, part of the state is pretty much a bedroom community for Chicago, which goes on Central Daylight time -- which is the same as Eastern Standard Time -- so most of Indiana is in sync with Chicago half the year and New York the other half, while New York and Chicago are always an hour apart. That's confusing, I would say.

So how do the rest of us fare? Not too well. The inconvenienced ones among us have not had the strength to fight City Hall on this issue. 'Daylight Savings Time' has always been inconsistent and most of us just "Spring forward and Fall back", at the appointed hour, without any complaint. It seems to be one of those "just do it" times in our lives.

When television started touting the benefits of the extra hour of daylight, we saw Dads coming home on Summer nights, briefcase tossed in the hall, sleeves rolled up, plenty of time for swinging a bat with Junior and Sissy before dinner. Early on, when the law was first passed, states could observe Daylight Savings Time, or not, according to the local requirements of 'Home Security' and local custom. Then Congress stepped in to end the confusion and established the Uniform Time Act throughout the United States and its possessions. There are exceptions, of course. Some states are in two time zones. So, the state can allow one part of it to remain on Standard Time as long as the other part goes on Daylight. It's as if Father Congress wrote: "You can do this, as long as you do that." And it makes no sense and creates a lot of bother. For me, I hate mollycoddling a clock that goes cock-a-doodle-doo instead of tick tock.

As I said, I remember when 'Daylight Savings Time' was a new idea when it was re-instated in September of 1945. I was very young before the war but I do remember that it was a wartime measure, put in place February of 1942. It was part of my childhood. Even since then, the rules have been tweaked to suit the times. In the recent past, conserving energy is the main reason. Save the Planet, the rallying call. In 1973, Middle East members of OPEC issued an embargo against the sale of crude oil to Israeli's allies. This caused our gasoline prices to jump more than 40 percent and really hurt our economy. So, Daylight Savings Time came to the rescue. It was prolonged for two years and we saved 10,000 barrels of oil a day. The experiment worked but after 1975, there was enough demand from the farming states to discontinue taking an hour away from the morning and giving it to the night. In 986, President Reagan pondered ways to put his stamp on things just as we turn off our collective lights. "Well," he thought, "let's start the first of April instead of the last." And we now do, and we save 300,000 barrels of oil a year just adding the month. Moving the hour from one place to another has apparently saved oil when we needed it most. But, we love a good campaign to conserve what we have and it would have worked as well.

I don't like Daylights Savings Time. Prime Time television starts at 8:00 p.m. I don't like sunshine hitting the screen at an annoying angle. I don't get used to the time change for two weeks after it starts and two weeks after it ends. I don't want to die between April and October and lose a perfectly good hour taken from me by an act of Congress. And, believe it or not, children are not all that entranced with late daylight in the summer. They want to play "Release" and "Ring-a-levio" and they want to catch fireflies, like we did at their age when there was no such thing as 'Daylight Savings Time'. All the sweaty summer nighttime fun is over when it stays light until after 9:00. There's beauty in the night but by the time the stars are twinkling in the late evening sky, it's bath and bedtime.

Benjamin Franklin toyed with saving daylight. It was tried in England at times when candles were lit at 4:00 p.m. and probably all day in the foggy, rainy clime. Saving candles was important then considering they were hand dipped, one by one -- surely a tedious chore. Some way to get more daylight would be on any inventor's agenda.

When arguing the issue, a supposition was put forth: A woman gives birth at 1:59 a.m. the second twin is born in 10 minutes, but the clock has been moved back and the birth is recorded as 1:09 a.m. "Exactly whom is the heir; exactly whom gets the title?" they argued endlessly. While that's not a common problem here, we can work those things out, it was an issue on record in Her Majesty's Realm.

Last week, I started waking up at 4:00 a.m. instead of the 5:00 a.m. I'm used to. I'll turn on lights, watch television, and wait for my day to begin. And in one more week, I'll be used to it again. But, is all this really necessary? "Crime happens more often at night," is probably true, as they say in supporting time changes. But the major crimes of the last decade were not only in daylight but also deliberately in broad daylight. I'm referring to the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing and last month's World Trade Center bombing. When criminals are hell-bent -- hmmm, an interesting turn of phrase, especially when terrorists go to their deaths satisfied they're destroying a way of life so precious to us we deliberately force an extra hour out of it half the year.

I do suspect evening play with the kids, conserving oil, conserving energy are all just excuses to explain what lies so deeply within us, the need to see every ounce of daylight. We don't admit that it's our Puritan ethic, words we live by: "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

And what is the American dream after all? Why, to be healthy, wealthy and wise, of course.