Timely Lessons

Timely Lessons

Wow.

What a storm was encountered after last week’s story on some Wewahitchka High School students who, as a class assignment, were distributing a petition to move the entire county to Central Time.

As with any school project, and certainly one involving Matt Bullard, a tremendously imaginative and engaging teacher at the high school, there were some lessons to take away.

No. 1 – When speaking locally, remember local is a relative term.

In writing the story and this column about the class assignment last week, I dealt with it being a Gulf County issue. After all, Bullard himself said he was following the most appropriate protocol possible because it was a “local” issue.

However, as many readers have pointed out since, and as was understood at the time of writing the story and column, the city of Apalachicola and the western stretch of Franklin County are also in Eastern Time and are west of the Apalachicola River.

Indeed, the city sought and was granted a waiver from the boundaries of the Eastern Time Zone, which ended once upon a time with the river, in the early 1900’s.

That waiver, however, is almost an argument for a move to Central Time in Gulf County when you consider that what Apalachicola and the west end of Franklin County were attempting was to align with the rest of the county, which sits entirely in the Eastern Time Zone.

But the story, the class project and the column all involved Gulf County entities, a school and this newspaper. Maybe it was a bit colloquial or narrowly focused to consider just Gulf County as the “area” in question, but this is what the project is about, Gulf County.

No. 2 – Toss in legend and people’s back hairs can rise.

Several folks whose opinions I deeply respect have noted that The St. Joe Company, despite local legend to the contrary, had little to do with Port St. Joe and the southern end of the county being on Eastern Time.

We have all heard the various versions, about the trains, the ships, local legislators such as the late Billy Joe Rish and George Tapper, and unfortunately trying to pry documentation from the state is akin to pulling an impacted molar.

And in discussing the possible – emphasis on possible – involvement of The St. Joe Company I should have rolled that one in with the other stories rooted in distant decades about how the time zones in this county came to be instead of seeming to assert it as fact.

It may very well not be. What information and paperwork I have seen leaves it open to question whether St. Joe had anything at all to do with the time zones, that the change to Eastern Time on the south end of the county had more to do with trains and shipping than the paper company.

Convenient though it was for Port St. Joe to be on the same time as headquarters in Jacksonville; that was likely a product of circumstance as anything. Consider me fully educated, to the extent anyone can be about circumstances that happened decades ago.

No. 3 – This time zone thing is sensitive stuff.

Judging by the comments to the story on our website, calls and e-mails, one would think the students at Wewahitchka High School and Mr. Bullard were conspiring to take the first born of every citizen in the county.

The vitriol aimed at this assignment has been astonishing, further proving the point of Bullard and several students about the polarization in this county.

Folks can talk all they want about county-wide voting, but the time zone difference is on another level.

Further, suddenly the time zone initiative is dragging up the long simmering pot of stew concerning the move, decades ago, of the county courthouse south from Wewahitchka to Port St. Joe.

This is a class assignment seeking for the county commissioners to put a non-binding referendum – in other words, a referendum that is in large measure symbolic – on the ballot next year.

It is not, as one commissioner has said in the past, an effort to construct a wall at White City to separate the two ends of the county, just a class assignment.

And as one aside, for those who have criticized school taxes and believe consolidation a logical step, the disparate time zones represent a significant obstacle to such a notion, due to transportation and other issues.

Want lower school taxes, lower taxes as a whole? Eliminating the difference in time zones might be a place to start.

No. 4 – When did the schools stop being a place to foster ideas?

Several commentators of the story and column of last week have seen in this class assignment some sort of sinister plot by the students or Mr. Bullard.

This despite the reality that Mr. Bullard has for several years sought similar projects – cell phone use in schools, the widening of the Wetappo Bridge on State 22 – to engage his students.

This is what schools are about, to foster new ways of looking at the world. If nothing else, Mr. Bullard has his students understanding that government is for the people, which is not a bad lesson to learn for any youngster nearing voting age.

We need more such thinking and engaging of students, not less. That is part of what makes this school district so special, that a superintendent and a principal foster such brainstorming in their teachers and pass it on to their students.

They should be applauded and encouraged not criticized. Schools should not be a place for narrow agendas, but free thinking.

Expressing an opinion differing from many is not a cause for lining up the firing squad; it is adhering to the foundation of this country, and in turn this county.

I return to the last line of last week’s column – these days it seems everybody could use to take a step back and take a deep, deep breath.