WHAT TIME IS IT?
Bob Reiss, From the Re-Echo, Winter 2002

When the Laycocks and Hankes first settled in St. Louis Park on their farms along the Minnehaha Creek, they lived their lives by seasons. Days were planned around sunrise and sunset The exact time of day was relatively unimportant to them. If they even had a clock, it was probably in me kitchen, inaccurate, and had to be wound periodically. Time was so unimportant that most were intentionally set five or ten minutes fast.

Railroads were the first to recognize the importance of accurate time. They had been instrumental in passing the Uniform Time Act of 1883 which established the time zones across the United States. The trains were the nation's time keepers. In St. Louis Park everyone lived within the sound of a train whistle and set their clock by them. An accurate pocket watch was the badge of a railroad man. The families of depot agents, Jorvig and Felber, probably still treasure the watches of these men.

When industry came to the Park, knowing the exact time became important. Now the Monitor Drill became the town's time keeper. The seven o'clock start, noon lunch, one o'clock restart and five o'clock quitting time were all signaled by its whistle. When the Monitor burned down, the Creosote plant took over. The volunteer fire department added the nine o'clock curfew.

The "Waiting Station" is a good example of how unconcerned people were about time. This was the name of the building at Walker and Lake Street. The streetcars may have operated on a schedule but the people did not. Because they walked from Oak Hill or the Center to the end of the streetcar line it was difficult to arive just on time. Therefore the store o this comer was named the "Waiting Station" because it was where they could wait for the next streetcar.

Radios caused a big change in the requirement to know the correct time. Radio programs were scheduled to start on the fifteen intervals. Ma Perkins came on at 2:15 PM and Little Orphan Annie at 5:45 PM. If you wanted to listen, it was necessary to turn the radio on at these times. Radios now became the nation's time keeper.

It took technology a while to catch up with the need for accurate time. The first half of the century very few people could afford personal watches. Wristwatches were used by the soldiers of World War I to coordinate attacks. By World War H they were still expensive enough to be a popular gift for important events such as graduations. They still needed to be wound and were still not very accurate.

It took the space age to bring us inexpensive clocks. But did it bring us clocks. We have and need at least one time keeper in every room and most kitchens have many. We now have "clocks" that keep very accurate time for years, in spite of power failures and even leap year. But even, still when the power fails, how many 12:00 o'clock flashers do you have? Seconds are not a small enough increment to measure how fast things happen today. Now things happen in nanoseconds. Accurate time is so important that we thought our world was going to stop functioning on Y2K because our computers were not going to be able to know what time it was.
 

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This information comes from a variety of sources: newspapers, books, yearbooks, phone directories, interviews, etc. Given the varied sources, we cannot guarantee that all of this information is correct, and welcome any additions and corrections. Please contact us with your contributions and comments.