Every Monday morning for years, at about 11:30 am, the telephone operator in a small Sierra-Nevada town received a call from a man asking the exact time.

One day the operator summed-up the nerve to ask him why the regularity. "I'm foreman of the local sawmill," he explained. "Every day, I have to blow the whistle at noon, so I call you to get the exact time."

The operator giggled, "That's really funny," she said. "All this time, we've been setting our clock by your whistle.