Air Conditioned Memories

There can be too much of a good thing

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My response to this challenge: July 3 is Air Conditioning Appreciation Day! I couldn’t live without air conditioning. Could you? Are you a lover or hater of AC? (Lynn L. Alexander)

I have a love/hate relationship with A/C. When it’s hot…..for me that means upper 80s and higher……nothing beats a wonderfully operating A/C system! Especially with humidity north of 75%. I set my thermostat (a retro style round Honeywell, sadly without the mercury switch….I can’t imagine what kids do for fun these days) at 77–79F. I also have a remote fan switch within reach where I’m writing this if I need an arctic blast after coming inside drenched in sweat.

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So A/C lowering the room temperature and humidity is the best. The hate relationship is the cost of the system, its maintenance and operating cost. I also don’t like the fact that I get less able to deal with the heat the more I rely on A/C. My dad upon getting his first central A/C system in 1976 (a Carrier unit) set the thermostat on 65F……every summer for decades! Ten minutes after walking inside it was miserable in the house! Much like a meat locker.

But I suppose the very worst was a guy at my office. He was much older and from the subcontinent…..and apparently someone who building management decided to give a key to the thermostat lock box. Perhaps thinking that was preferable than him heat stroking out in the building? However that came at the expense of the rest of us freezing in our offices in July! That dude was never cool enough! I hope he was married to an ice maiden.

I had a corner office way in the back of the building (sadly with no windows to prevent me from escaping….a Pizza Hut being across the street…..where was the remote work crap when I needed it?) and I simply couldn’t take it anymore. So in the late evening I went back to the office and all but blocked the ceiling vent in a manner which couldn’t be seen. Only difference was a slightly louder ‘shhhhh’ sound……otherwise problem solved. However the next day I heard a commotion down the hall and shortly after the lady in the office next to mine charging by wearing a winter coat in July……and slammed her office door! I asked her what was going on and she said that *&$#&@# still refuses to turn up the thermostat and her office is even colder now than before! After complimenting her ensemble……very reminiscent of Brigitte Bardot……I told her I’m likely responsible for that and had her walk into my office where the temperature was now very comfortable. She asked me to do the same for her office which I was glad to do. I sure hope that man’s family opted for cryonics for his perhaps not so eternal repose?

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Now aside from cold air addicts there is one thing I miss from decades ago before A/C became common in homes. I grew up in St. Louis, MO where the summer heat and humidity is brutal. Some nights were so bad people would sleep on their screened in porch. However every evening in the late Spring to early Fall the entire neighborhood would be on their front porch with the sounds of Cardinals baseball and pitching horseshoes and grownups yelling to each other across the street or at their children. There were also ladies playing card games.

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Highlights for us kids at the time were finding out which house had kool-aid, playing tag and hide and seek. A real treat was assured by hearing that horn from the ice cream or snow cone truck……which had everyone scrambling back to their porch to beg their dad for a dime or 15 cents or a quarter! You always knew from the whining who was on the naughty list that day. Usually all you had to do was crack apart the ice tray and fill it with water and place it back in the freezer……and of course being the go-fer for your parents be it ice cubes, beer, soda pop, cigs etc. I always ended up getting a bomb pop or a multi-flavored snow cone…..strawberry, banana, orange, grape and root beer! It looked like a work of art! The snow cone ‘truck’ was actually an old beat up 1948 woody station wagon!

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Of course another seasonal favorite was track practice……courtesy of the St. Louis Encephalitis……all of us kids chasing after the mosquito fogger truck spewing those luxurious clouds of DDT laden smoke! And all with our parents approval. After all they were smoking up a storm too. Sometimes when the Falstaff/Stag/Busch/Budweiser was flowing good we’d get to eavesdrop on WW2 and Korea stories…… though not much on Vietnam since that was always on the TV and in church as well as the newspaper obituaries.

In the days of the fairly common brownouts and before the prevalence of A/C there was more awareness of neighbors and a greater sense of community simply because there was ample downtime spent with each other. Perhaps this dynamic still exists somewhere in the northern tier of states or Canada? I know it’s something I really miss.

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