TIME WAITS FOR THIS MAN; CLOCK FANCIER SET TO TEND TO HIS GEMS AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT.

Byline: Krystn Shrieve Staff Writer

While most residents will be pushing buttons on their digital clocks to move the numerals back an hour tonight, one Simi Valley resident will be manually turning the hands on the 46 wind-up clocks in his home.

John Lupi, 37, has a passion for clocks and has a home filled with many antique timepieces, including one dating back to the 1830s.

Lupi also has owned The Clock Shop in Simi Valley since 1979 and said that before daylight-saving time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday he anticipates a flood of calls from people wanting to know the correct way to move the mechanisms on their grandfather, cuckoo, wall or mantle clocks.

``It's OK for the hands on battery clocks to move backward or forward,'' Lupi said. ``But people who have wind-up clocks have to be careful about how they move the hands.''

For example, Lupi said the hands on clocks that chime every 15 minutes must be moved forward to each 15-minute mark and allowed to chime. Clocks that strike hourly must be moved forward one hour at a time.

Lupi doesn't have to worry about changing the more than 100 clocks in the showroom at his shop. They're all set to random times, so that in any given moment customers can hear a variety of chimes, gongs and cuckoos.

Bob Aldrich, the Internet Webmaster for the California Energy Commission, said the concept of daylight-saving time was proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 to help spare candle wax.

It was put into effect in the United States in 1918 to conserve energy during World War I, Aldrich said.

``Numbers came out of the Department of Transportation about 25 years ago that indicated daylight-saving time allowed us to save the energy equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil each day it is observed,'' Aldrich said. ``That's just a drop in the bucket. We go through 900,000 barrels of oil per month in California just for gasoline.''

Congress has repealed and reinstated daylight-saving time several times. Now states are allowed to decide whether to observe the tradition of setting clocks ahead one hour on the last Sunday in April and setting them back on the last Sunday in October.

Daylight-saving time is not observed in Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, eastern Indiana and most of Arizona except the Navajo Indian Reservation, Aldrich said.

Recently, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to propose that California remain on daylight-saving time year round.

Letters expressing this opinion will be sent to state and federal officials for review, said Cam Currier, spokesman for Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who made the recommendation because he felt it would lead to fewer traffic accidents and heightened pedestrian safety.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who cast the dissenting vote, said he's glad daylight-saving time ends this weekend.

``I love it in the summer, but I'd hate it in the winter,'' said Yaroslavsky, who represents neighboring Los Angeles County communities.

Yaroslavsky said during daylight-saving time it is still dark when his school-age son is waiting for the bus in the latter part of the six o'clock hour.

``It's not rocket science,'' Yaroslavsky said. ``Some people don't mind waking up in the dark. I'd rather sacrifice sunlight at 6 p.m. for sunlight at 7 a.m.''

For more information on the history of daylight-saving time, visit the Web site www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) To keep his grandfather clocks running, John Lupi winds them once a week.

(2) John Lupi, 37, owner of the Clock Shop in Simi Valley, has more than 100 clocks in his shop, which he has owned since 1979.

Eric Grigorian/Special to the Daily News