It’s time change weekend and there are several rites of its passage you should be observing.  Especially if you live in Amarillo, where so much has happened historically around the switch.

Those that have lived here long enough know better than to taunt mother nature.  And when it comes to providing extra light to feed cattle and more sun to nourish crops, there is no rational argument against changing our clocks forward an hour.  And we’ll never forget what can happen when we don’t.

Much like the Amarillo Fire Department hasn’t forgotten why it’s easier to remind you to change the batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors than extinguish flames engulfing your home.  Another hazard that must be addressed before they trigger spastic nasal convulsions are the ceiling fan cigar dust bunnies.  Change the direction of your ceiling fan to knock them off the blades.  Your fan must rotate counter clockwise during the summer or you only kill the male ceiling fan cigar dust bunnies.

The High Plains has had more that it’s share of tragedy surrounding the time change.

In 1936, as the Dust Bowl ravaged the time change was held two days early to avoid another deadly dust storm.  Tragically, the dust storm hit anyway.

In 1956, the clocks weren’t changed that year because everyone in the Panhandle was looking for the nuclear bomb Pantex misplaced.  Officially that incident didn’t happen.

in 1976 there was more road construction going on than today and it was decided by the city council to cancel the time change that spring.  One TxDot road crew didn’t get the message and after changing their clocks forward mistakenly continued paving the road south, not realizing the mistake until reaching Lubbock.

And most recently, in 1994, when the time change was celebrated downtown by a dancing group of 13 to 15-year-old boys.  They were commissioned by a local arts enthusiast whose real works of art were the non-disclosure agreements each of the dancing lads signed before their time stopping performances. Shocked citizens remained typically and stoically frozen during the scandal and clocks throughout the city remained unchanged until the 4th of July that year.

Check your smoke detectors, kill those bunnies, change the clocks.  We can’t pretend not to know what happens when we fail to do those things.

More From 98.7 The Bomb