Cheryl and I were relaxing out on our back deck after supper. It was still warm outside, maybe as high as the mid-80s. When we came back in, I commented on how cool it felt inside. It might not have been cool by your standards because we keep our thermostat on 80 in the summer, but it felt cool to us. It reminded me of days gone by when beating the Georgia heat wasn’t as easy as pushing a button.
My grandparents lived in houses with high ceilings, and I’ve read that one of the prime reasons they were so high was to give the hot air a place to go. The house I grew up in was more modern, with 8-foot ceilings. We had central heat, but no central air. Somewhere along the way, we got a window unit that did an excellent job of cooling down the living room and dining room. We also had a smaller unit in my parent’s room, making it tolerable for my dad to sleep during the daytime. Having air conditioning was one thing. Using it regularly was another as it wasn’t the most efficient in those days. If you kept it cool all the time, you might have gotten sticker shock when the power bill came.
Dan and I shared a bedroom, and there was no air conditioning for us. We did have a big box fan that we stuck in the window at night. Unless it was raining, we could draw in the relatively cool night air, making it tolerable. We were young and used to running around in the heat, so I suppose we were acclimated to it. Finding a shady spot under a tree or a cool drink out of a water hose was usually all we needed to cool off. If it was sweltering, a trip indoors might have been in order to break some ice out of an ice tray and pour a tall glass of Kool-Aid.
Some of our cars had air conditioning, and some didn’t. My first car didn’t, but it had large vents in the kick panels. Our truck had side vent windows that you could turn and cause a rush of air to go through the passenger compartment. Again, we managed.
The one place where it got tough was church. Sure, it had high ceilings and large windows, but it still got warm. The fact that you were dressed up in your Sunday best also added to the heat. About the only thing you could do to keep cool was to fan yourself manually with hand-held fans, usually with the name of some funeral home on them. I’m not sure that doing all that fanning didn’t make you hotter, but moving some air over the skin did seem to help for the moment.
I have said it before, but it is incredible how much easier life has gotten in my lifetime. Maybe every generation says that, but it seems more true now than ever. When you feel the heat this week and can retreat into a cool, air-conditioned place, be grateful to the generations past who brought us to this place.
“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order.”
– Jordan B. Peterson