LIFE WITHOUT AC

Yesterday I mentioned the fact that we had no air conditioning in our house when we were growing up. In fact, I don’t know a single one of my friends who did either. I could never have foreseen the difference AC would make in the lives of Americans once that comfort began to creep into our culture. It has completely changed our way of life, and not always for the better.

In the first place, the children spent very little time indoors. After we had eaten breakfast and cleaned (?) our rooms, we immediately wanted to get outside where we could play in the cool of the morning somewhere. BJ and I had a good place on the side of our house under the shade of a mimosa tree. We would set up our "house" with our miniature kitchen furniture and doll beds and play all morning. Or we would ride our bikes up and down the street (there was very little traffic on our street once the fathers left for work). Sometimes we played in the sandbox set up in a corner of the back yard under trees. We had little cars and we could set up an entire little town of houses, usually up on hillsides with long winding driveways leading to them.

We played “cops and robbers” by hiding in various places and chasing each other around with toy pistols, re-enacting the Westerns we saw at the Happiness Club on Saturday afternoons. Our parents never thought twice about our playing these “violent” games, or that we would grow up to be criminals if we did.

At night we could hardly wait for it to get dark and we could play “hide-n-go-seek” with as many neighborhood children we could find. That was the most fun of all because the darkness added an element of excitement to it.

On days it was really hot, Mother would pack us up a picnic lunch and we would go to a public pool for the day. There were two of these: Cascade Plunge close to the fair grounds, or Willow Plunge in Franklin, about twenty miles away. This was quite a sacrifice for Mother because she had red hair and the skin that goes with it. I can remember her now, dressed in the coolest dress she could find, sitting in the shade somewhere watching each one of us. She never went in the water herself and didn’t even own a bathing suit. The only times I ever saw her in shorts (borrowed from one of us) was when she was cleaning the house during the heat of the summer.

The point is that we were outside from morning until we went to bed at night, thoroughly worn out by the games we had played all day. Even if it rained, we played outside if there was no lightening. Rain or shine, we slept soundly all through the night cooled by a breeze brought in by the big attic fan blowing through the open windows.

The advantages of such a lifestyle were tremendous: children learned to use their imaginations, formed lifelong friendships, got plenty of exercise, and were rarely ever obese. Adults spent time with their neighbors, got to know them, and helped each other out.

Now, would I want to give up my AC to go back to that lifestyle? Not on your life, but I do recognize the benefits of what we had without it and I wish we could somehow have the best of both worlds.

Someone smarter than I will have to figure out how, though; it’s too much for me.