On the first day of this month, I spent half the evening running around our house’s three levels, changing the hour on every clock and mumbling to myself with each step I took.

We own something like 23 mech-anical and electronic gadgets that keep track of time, not counting calendars. They include Ellen’s father’s 1923 Elgin pocket watch, an 1891 Attleboro pendulum clock that I wind every three or four days; and an assortment of two microwaves, a computer and a bunch of other electrical gadgets that have clocks.

I ended up exhausted from trying to get them all displaying exactly the same time. It doesn’t help knowing that in less than four months we’ll all be reversing this same frantic exercise.

I hope someone in our great country can explain to me why we still perform this practice. This is the 21st century. We live in towns and cities with giant, lighted billboards and illuminated skyscrapers. When the sun sets, artificial lighting takes over, and it’s probably brighter some places at midnight than it is at noon.

I know, daylight saving time is supposed to give us an extra hour of evening light during the summer months. But what if I’d rather use that 60 minutes for my afternoon nap? Or maybe I’d like an extended lunch break.

What I really think is that somebody in Olympia and/or Washington, D.C., is messing with my brain, trying to remind me again who’s in charge.

I thought that retirement meant I could forget about clocks and calendars. I could “go with the flow,” eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired. Ha!

Ancient civilizations calculated time by the rainy and dry seasons. They knew when to plant and when to harvest. They got up with the chickens and went to bed when the candles flickered out. It seems to me we’re messing with Mother Nature’s internal clock here, which can be risky business.

I suppose I’m grumpy just because it gets dark so early, and it’s only late November.

I’ll just pout and suck my thumb until winter is over and spring arrives. Anyway, insignificant little me tucked away in North Central Washington doesn’t have much to say about it. As long as we keep supplying folks in the east and south with crisp apples, juicy cherries and sweet-tasting pears, they won’t much care.

When Ellen and I lived in Boston, supposedly well-educated people asked with straight faces if we had electricity, running water and one-room schoolhouses in the rural Northwest. One person told me she’d flown over Idaho when traveling from Massachusetts to Texas.

I suggested the pilot must have been seriously lost, or else she was confused and it was Indiana or perhaps Iowa. She wasn’t convinced.

I’ve probably grumped enough for today. But I believe we regular folks around our nation deserve a little more respect and attention.

Isn’t it about time for people in high places to listen to the common sense of us humble residents in America’s wide-open spaces? Our roots go deep into the soil of all 50 states.

Perhaps we small-town residents need to be more assertive. Our simplicity, work ethic and old-fashioned values might just be exactly what this confusing and complicated world needs.

Kel Groseclose has called the Wenatchee Valley home since 1975. He and his wife Ellen have six children and 13 grandchildren. He can be reached at kegroseclose@gmail.com.