Hello family, friends and my mansuscript cheerleaders,
It seems that many people don’t like Daylight Saving Time.
This post is about how Uncle Vern refused to acknowledge Daylight Saving Time.
If you are related to me and have an ancestor with the last name of Fairley, you most likely know Uncle Vern.
My mother, Janette, was his niece. Everyone I know called him Uncle Vern.
You might say he was marching to the beat of a different drummer, but Mom told me that Uncle Vern said it was NOT God’s Time.
I knew Uncle Vern as kind of a gruff elderly man, but Janette knew him as a kindly uncle who loved her and listened to her.
This is how I remember Uncle Vern. He is in the second row, wearing bib overalls. This photo was taken on the steps of the Fairley homestead during a family reunion in August. I’d guess this is 1975.
First row: Janette, Helen, Becky Jane. Second Row: Naomi, Patty Jane, Uncle Vern. Third row: Sara Jane, Gordon, Charles. Back row: Martha.
His voice and mannerisms might have seemed blunt to a newcomer, but he devoted himself to his nieces and nephews. (He never married or had children.) Once, when Janette was a child, everyone talked while seated at the dinner table. Janette began to tell a story, and then Nina chimed in. “Hush,” Vern said to Nina. “I want to hear what Janette has to say.”
Have you ever been in a group where someone bragged about their grandchildren or other relatives? Well, here’s a cute story. Before Janette, her sister, and other cousins were born, Vern was at church choir practice and proudly declared, “I have five nephews, and they are all boys!”
“I have five nephews, and they are all boys!”
Vern proudly declared his sibling’s offspring.
Janette often accompanied and assisted Uncle Vern as he did his farm chores. She felt comfortable around him and did most of the talking when she was alone with him.
“You bet your sweet life!” he often replied to Janette’s comments.
“You bet your sweet life!”
a favorite response as Uncle Vern listened to Janette.
Uncle Vern had a serious, quiet manner. He could be critical when talking about people not walking the straight and narrow path. Vern was a faithful church member and sang in the choir. Most Fairleys attended the Gayville Methodist Church, founded by their ancestors, but Uncle Vern started attending a more conservative Pentecostal church in the evenings.
Gordon, Janette’s eldest sibling, worked on the farm with Vern during the summers of World War II. He did this for three summers.
Young men, eighteen and older, were drafted in great numbers. Uncle Vern, in Gayville, South Dakota, had to hire a man every summer to help run his farm. But since the supply of young men had dried up and Gordon’s eyesight prevented him from joining the Army, Winnie and Russell decided that Gordon would work on the farm.
Gordon said,
“I had no friends. Every Saturday night, Uncle Vern went to town and talked to his friends. I would go to the drugstore, buy a pint of ice cream, and eat it in the car. Every Sunday morning, we went to the Methodist church. Uncle Vern loved the Pentecostal church in another town, so he went there every Sunday night. Often, I went with him. It was either that or stay home. Even though I found their theology to be weird, it was interesting.”
I don’t know if it was the Pentecostal church that said Daylight saving time was NOT God’s Time, but Uncle Vern told people it wasn’t, and he refused to acknowledge it. If you set an appointment with him, he might arrive an hour late.
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