Mar 11

Mar 11 Jon Dawson: Lenoir County man to host Netflix show

It's daylight saving time again, but one Lenoir County community has had enough of it.

"I think some people use daylight saving time as an excuse to get to church late, long after the plate has been passed," Bucklesberry Mayor Parrott Sutton said. "By the time everybody figures out how to change the clocks in their cars it's time to switch back."

Sutton said changing the clock in his truck is now No. 4 on the list of things that annoy him most, right behind preparing his taxes, people who take more than 30 seconds to order at a drive-thru and Ricky Gervais.

"I know times change but the world is getting a little too complicated," Sutton said. "A few decades ago, if you bought a television, all you had to do was plug it in and turn it on. Nowadays, a television installation requires the same number of people that got us to the moon in 1969."

He continued, "When I turn on a TV, I want to see Judge Judy sock it to some punks, not have to click through a 12-tier menu and wait for a series of satellites to sync up. I mean, a $5 set of rabbit ears used to bring me the world. If Walter Cronkite's face got a little fuzzy, you'd just move the rabbit ears to the right and everybody got on with their lives. Now if the TV signal goes out I have to talk to a guy in Bombay who doesn't believe in barbecue."

It was actually Sutton's grandson who inspired him to push for a daylight saving ban in Bucklesberry.

"My grandson always changes the clocks for us," Sutton said. "Last year that joker moved the clocks in the house and the car TWO hours back. The next day we arrived at church to find an empty parking lot. For a few minutes, I thought we'd slept through the rapture."

The only new thing Sutton has ever enjoyed is keyless vehicle entry.

"They've actually had keyless car entry for years — it's called a crowbar," Sutton said. "I do enjoy that little button on my keychain that makes the car horn honk. I like to sprinkle bits of Alpo around my tires and wait for our dog Bozo to make his move. When he gets to within an inch of the food I hit that horn button and the front half of his body freezes while the back half tries to get away. If he's going through a dyspeptic spell it's extraordinarily entertaining."

When Sutton proposed the idea of abstaining from daylight saving time, the responses from the Bucklesberry community ranged from "alright" and "fine with me" to "I reckon so" and "if it's fine with y'all, it's fine with me."

"Ours is a sleepy community, and by that, I mean everybody works a lot and then they go to sleep," Sutton said. "Yankees refer to it as Zen, which is a great thing that's sadly been distorted over the generations, so in Bucklesberry it's referred to as ‘peace and quiet.’ Zen in its original form is great, but it somehow morphed into people thinking it's okay to pay $7 for a cup of coffee.

“Peace and quiet results in realizing a $1 cup of coffee is plenty good, while your retirement fund absorbs the other $6."

On Monday morning, if your office seems a bit bare, Sutton advises you not to worry.

"You may have coworkers who live in Bucklesberry that won't arrive at the office the same time you do," Sutton said. "Don't get upset and run to human resources with a pitchfork. Just take a deep breath and realize they'll be working for another hour when you leave to go home. It'll make the highways less crowded and make it easier for you to get the coffee pot in the break room"

The attention brought to the Bucklesberry community as a result of its daylight savings time policy has resulted in Sutton being offered his own Netflix series.

"The show is called 'Farmers on Tractors Eating Biscuits'," Sutton said. "I don't know what Netflix is but I am fond of biscuits.”

Jon Dawson's humor columns are published weekly by NeuseNews.com.