David Schaengold, a Cincinnati native writing for the Daily Princetonian, has a column on Indiana’s time zone.
He starts with:
For those of you from Massachusetts, the adoption of daylight-saving time by a single vote in the Indiana state legislature may seem as trivial as the state itself. And yet from Chicago to Cincinnati, Indiana’s horological peculiarities have endeared the otherwise uninspiring, and frankly, unpleasant state to generations of Midwesterners.
This guy goes to school in New Jersey. Does he really want to get into whose state is unpleasant?
But mainly, I’m confused about what route this guy is taking:
You set out heading west from Cincinnati and shortly pass through the state line into casino country: Ohio and Dearborn counties. Sensibly enough for a region economically dependent on Cincinnati, the two counties follow daylight-saving time and are in the Eastern time zone. These are small counties, and leaving them to the Northwest, the clock moves back an hour. Not content with only one idiosyncrasy, the Eastern time zone makes a large square foray into Central time zone territory in the middle of the state. After setting your clock another hour back in Central (you are now two hours behind Cincinnati, an hour’s drive away), you almost immediately have to set it forward again as you drive into Indianapolis, in Eastern. Northwest of the capital, the adventure continues, as you set your clock back once more to Central. Not free yet, as you enter the counties that pay tribute to Chicago and daylight-saving time, you must set your clock forward once more, despite traveling west. Drawing a line along this highly plausible route, the time in each zone when it is noon in Cincinnati is as follows: 12 p.m., 11 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.. That’s five timezone changes in as many hours as it takes to drive the route.
There are no Central Time Zone counties between Cincinnati and Indianapolis and there are no Central Time Zone areas that do not observe Daylight Saving Time. Under the route described by this ignoramus, if you depart Cincinnati at noon (and travel the route instantaneously) you’d have 12 p.m. in Cincinnati and 11 a.m. from the Indiana border (or the border of Ohio or Dearborn County depending on the route) to Chicago. Alternatively, if it was during the 5 months of the year when DST was not in effect, it would be 12 p.m. in Cincinnati into Indiana through Indianapolis and up until you hit the Jasper County line. At that point it would be 11 a.m. until you hit Chicago.
The author goes on to say that Indiana was entirely in the Eastern Time Zone in 1966 which is false. (Here is the map from 1961 to 1967)
Despite being riddled with factual inaccuracies, this article is still informative. Governor Daniels was obviously anxious to minimize the razzing he took from his Princeton buddies who are probably about as well informed as this guy.
Yikes.
astonishing. at least he got a couple facts right, like how you have to drive through indiana to get from cincy to chicago.
i also like where he says that indiana was the only state to defy DST. actually, two other states (arizona and hawaii) don’t observe DST, but for some reason, indiana is the only state that gets hassled for it. i’ve never quite understood why.
And to think Doug that you used to wear a shirt that said “New Jersey is COOL”. This is how they pay you back, by dissing Indiana?
What map could that writer have been looking at? One in his own mind?
Yeah, well, I used to have a T-shirt speaking favorably of Texas, and we both volunteered to help the Bush/Quayle effort in ’88. Things change.
Classic. I am in the pro-DST crowd, but I am always amused when someone a) condescends to Hoosiers about the time zone thing and b) doesn’t understand how time zones worked in-pre DST Indiana. Don’t get me wrong, the confusion is the reason why I am in favor of DST, but it’s not exactly advanced calculus. An Ivy Leaguer writing a newspaper column ought to be able to figure it out in about five minutes.
Doesn’t the column just reek of the stereotypical Ivy League poseur? The column could have been written by the guy who was dressed down by Will Hunting at the “Hahvahd Bah.” This guy seems like a self-loathing midwesterner trying to prove to the bluebloods from Eton and Andover that he is really one of them, despite growing up in the proximity of cornfields and Kentucky. He also seems to own a thesaurus.
Ive lived in PA and the saying there is that NJ is what ‘washed down’ that PA didnt want.