Yesterday
when my air conditioner was blowing hot air and I had to turn it off, I thought
about the time before air conditioning. Before we had electricity, the only fans
were the funeral home fans or a palm leaf fan, and all they did was move the hot
air around. At night doors and windows were left open in the hope for a cool
breeze. After we got electricity we had small oscillating fans that moved the
hot air a little faster than the funeral home fans did.I lived in Alabama in the 1940s before air conditioning. One summer I lived
on the third floor of the Alabama Apartments with a small electric fan. Somehow
we managed to survive. My worst summer was probably in 1945 when I worked at
Herman Hospital in Houston. I had to stand over a steam table in a hot kitchen,
checking trays. When the tray line finished, I was could eat lunch but I was too
hot to eat. That's when I learned to drink iced coffee. I took a glass of ice to
the coffee urn and filled it with coffee, which refreshed me enough that I could
eat.
It wasn't until I moved to Little Rock and was expecting my second baby
in the summer of 1955 that we got two window air conditioners. Before then, I
remember a good friend from Pangburn was a patient in St. Vincent Hospital and I
took her an electric fan from our house, because there was no air conditioning
at the hospital. When I went to work at the VA Hospital in 1959, the only part
of the hospital to have air conditioning was the dog lab and the library. I
would go to the library to plan menus and do my paperwork. The poor patients
suffered from the heat and it really affected their appetite. It was much later
that we had air conditioning in our cars. I remember driving to Florida one
summer in a little Corvair with no air conditioning, we nearly roasted and the
girls kept saying, "are we there yet?"
We are so spoiled today; we wonder
how we lived in the past. We may be paying a big price for our comfort, if it
results in global warming.