Arizona Town Confused as Times Go By : Daylight saving: In October, no two clocks in Tuba City seem to agree. It makes it difficult to shop or to keep appointments.

For the last month, when it’s noon at the local Thriftway store here, it’s been 11 o’clock at the Texaco station cross the street.

Down the road at Tonanesdizi Shopping Center, when the clock in Mikey’s Pizza said 2, the one next door in Bargains West said 3.

Teachers at Tuba City High School who get off work at their usual time of 4 p.m. have had to rush a quarter mile down the road to the post office because that is when Postmaster Lindell Cornelison locks his lobby, at his usual time of 5.

Among the few distinctions claimed by this small desert town on the Navajo Reservation, the oddest is being the only community in the country that simultaneously operates on two time standards every October.

“It’s another nuisance that we have to survive in this town,” said Tom Drouhard, a surgeon at the Tuba City Medical Center.

Drouhard’s complaint, echoed by at least half the town, is that for a month no one has known for sure what time others in town are going by, whether he or she will be early or late for appointments or when stores are open.

In some households, children go to school an hour after parents leave for work.

“It’s a mess,” said Marsha Griffin, co-owner of the Tuba City Truck Stop cafe.

The reason lies with the way the state of Arizona, the Navajo Nation and the Tuba City Unified School District deal with Daylight Saving Time.

Arizona does not observe the ritual adjustment of clocks by one hour twice a year. The Navajo Nation does. But the local school board, arguing that it is dangerous for rural schoolchildren to wait in early morning darkness for their school buses, has voted for six years running to return to Mountain Standard Time weeks early.

Board member Tom Chabin contends that “the consensus of the community is to go back to Arizona time.”

Not so, says postmaster Cornelison.

“We (went) with the majority, and that’s sticking to daylight (time),” he said. “It’s not an ideal situation, but the public school doesn’t want to discuss or involve the rest of the community with this decision.”

Almost all of the other agencies in town followed the school district’s lead, until this year. “The hospital didn’t switch over because the majority of the population that we serve, that is, our Navajo patients, are still on Daylight Saving Time,” said Rosalyn Curtis, director of the Indian Health Service medical center.

This month, the confusion was rampant.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs-run Tuba City Boarding School switched to standard time, but its janitors, who report to a different agency across town, remained on daylight time. The Navajo Community College branch went to standard time. Next door, the college’s continuing education office stayed on daylight time.

“It’s really very inconvenient,” said Jim Store, a staff assistant to Navajo President Peterson Zah. “We have people that work for various entities in the same household, and we have people with kids going into different schools that are on different time zones. It gets very frustrating at times.”

Although the tribe has jurisdiction over the matter, Store said it is unlikely to dictate a solution.

Fortunately, time is running out on the problem this year. On Sunday morning, everybody will be back on the same clock. Until October, 1992.