Saturday, October 30, 1999
Some Hoosiers living on the edge of time
A place where clocks are never turned back
BY RACHEL MELCER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
RISING SUN, Ind. — Next week, Rising Sun-Ohio County Community Schools students will renew their perennial excuse for missing first bell: They really can't tell time.
Every six months, when most of the country (including Ohio County) either springs forward or falls back, the schools and the bulk of the state of Indiana stay right where they are.
If you're in daylight savings time, don't forget to set your clocks back one hour tonight before you go to bed.
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Aside from the first couple of transitional days, people who live and work on the temporal edge say their confusion will lessen when Ohio, most of Kentucky and five southeastern Indiana coun ties set their clocks back to standard time Saturday night.
“It never fails. You always get someone who's a little bit confused,” said Superintendent Steve Patz, whose office clock is the only one on a wall in the district set to “fast time” — the Eastern Daylight Time kept by Cincinnati and Indiana's Ohio and Dearborn counties.
The district chooses to remain on “slow” Eastern Standard Time to keep pace with the Southeast Indiana Career Center in Ripley County, attended by about half of the upperclassmen at Rising Sun High School. The high school has about 320 students; about 680 more attend kindergarten through eighth grade.
So from April through October, the side-by-side schools are a slow-time island in a county of fast-time clocks.
The drama also is playing out in Indiana's Harrison, Clark and Floyd counties, which border and follow the Eastern Daylight Time change of Louisville. Similarly, five counties in southeastern Indiana and five more near Chicago do the biannual time change to stick with the Central Daylight and Central Standard times of Illinois.
Although the entire state of Indiana is officially on standard time, changing not at all, this sprinkling of border counties are allowed to declare themselves exempt.
Switzerland County, just west of Ohio County, is an odd conglomeration of clocks set any which way. People adjust their personal timing to the places where they study or work.
The changes can wreak havoc on personal and professional lives.
Driving along the Ohio River in Indiana is an exercise in time travel, with sometimes disastrous results. Ohio County Deputy Clerk Kathryn Haines says people who get traffic tickets while passing through the fast time zone often get confused when they come back to face the charges.
“Every day people come in and say, "Well, I'm here for court' and court was an hour ago,” she said. “They get another date and they have to come back again.”
When Mike and Dareen Seipel began teaching at schools near their Randolph Township, Ohio County, home, they never dreamed they would be working such, well, different hours.
Mr. Seipel begins his day at 8 a.m. at Rising Sun High School. His wife starts at 8 a.m. at Central Elementary School in Lawrenceburg. But from spring until fall, she leaves the house an hour earlier.
“I get that extra hour of sleep while she's up getting ready. I have to keep saying, "Be quiet, dear,'” Mr. Seipel laughed. But now that their biological clocks are about to even out, he looks forward to sharing breakfast every morning.
And, unlike most Ohio County school students and staff members who exist between two times, Mr. Seipel doesn't even have to reset his watch.
“I'm probably one of the only ones in the (school) building on slow time, because I don't know how to reset this watch,” he said, displaying the digital model. “I bought it this way and it's going to stay.”
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