Time for a Change in This Town (April 24, 1982)
My inspiration for this offbeat story came from the goofy photos that photographer Chuck Blake took every year to remind readers to turn their clocks back or ahead, according to the season: pushing back a sundial, or the town clock at Second Congregational Church, for example. My idea was to look in the atlas for a town that sat right on the dividing line. Once I began calling people, townsfolk began telling me I was becoming the talk of this little town so people were even expecting my call. Then came their mailed invitation to attend the town’s centennial celebration.
ORA, Ind. – There’s standard time, and there’s daylight savings time.
Here you can have it both ways.
This unincorporated town on state Route 35, with a population of maybe 180, is part in Starke County and part in Pulaski (That “ski” is pronounced “sky.”)
The most confusing aspect of this town – although folks in Ora may not all agree on this either— is that it’s in two different time zones.
(And you’ thought Shelburne Falls’ boundaries were confusing.)
Come Sunday at 2 a.m., Ora – in fact all of Indiana — will come together for the first time since last Oct. 25. Then next October, when millions of people across America turn their clocks back, it will again become a tale of two time zones in Ora.
In all, 17 Indiana counties align themselves with Central Standard Time: primarily those in the extreme northwest within metropolitan Chicago and the extreme southwest, around Evansville.
Sunday, they turn their clocks an hour ahead to Central Daylight Savings Time, joining the rest of the state, which remains in Eastern Standard Time year-round.
Fall and winter, most of Indiana and half of Ora aligns itself with its neighbors to the east. Spring and summer, all of Indiana unites, but in synchronization with abutters to the west.
“When I was a kid growing up in the ’50s, it was really confusing,” said Jean Weimer, director of the Indiana Division of the state library in Indianapolis. “One year, they’d change to daylight time and summer. How often I wished they would the next year they wouldn’t. There were fights between the state legislature and the federal government. For a few years, we were switching time zones every summer. How I wished they would put Indiana in one zone or the other completely. We’re just sort of caught.”
But compared to Ora, Ms. Weimer has it easy in the state capital, about 100 miles southeast of the little town time forgot.
After all, half of Ora is in one of 17 Indiana counties that swing west on “slow” (Central) time; the Pulaski County half swings with the rest of the state and “fast” (Eastern) time.
Because it’s unincorporated, there’s no town hall or town clock to deal with in Ora.
The Tippecanoe River slices through Ora, but doesn’t establish county boundaries. It just rolls along, perhaps oblivious to the town which doesn’t even plan to observe its own centennial this summer … a town which residents say lost its zip after the pickle factory and other firms closed down.
“It is kind of teeny- weeny,” said Richard Thompson, postmaster in the town of Monterey, five miles from Ora in Pulaski County. Some of his motor route patrons are in Ora.
“It’s only four or five miles west of me and it’s only 1:00 over there when it’s 2:00 here. You just remember when you climb in your car that there’s going to be an hour’s difference.”
To Kenneth Mahler, who cleans boilers and furnaces, “It’s a very messed up affair” in “a small little one-horse town.”
“We keep our clocks to correspond to where we work. Most people know we’ve got two different time zones here.” Without keeping two clocks side by side in their houses, and without a pair of watches on their wrists, Ora folks keep punctual, either on “fast” time or on “slow” time.
“If you’re supposed to meet someone, you just make sure you keep straight in your head to meet them “on their time, whichever time they may be on.”
But imagine if you work up north, up in Knox, and your spouse works down in Winamac. How do you keep your clocks then? Or maybe your kids go to school in Monterey, but you work up in Plymouth? Then, said Donna Wallers, who with her husband runs Walters’ (grocery) Store, it does become a mess.
“They’re going in every which direction,” she said.
“Someday, we’ll all be back on the same time.” But if some people here mark their time “fast,” and others mark it “slow,” Richard Thompson is unfazed by it.
“Some of’ ’em are … some of ’em aren’t,” said Thompson, whose bait shop he claims to be “the best one in northern Indiana.” Whether it’s Central, Daylight Savings, Eastern, Mountain, Pacific or whatever, “It don’t make no difference to us,” Thompson said.
“We’re all low-geared here. We don’t care about clocks.”
— RICHIE DAVIS