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Writer's picturejamesbriankerr

Remembering the Days We Went Outside to Escape the Heat


Another week in the cooker here in Pennsylvania.


As I write this, it’s ten o’clock on a Monday morning and already it’s 85 degrees outside, going up to 95 this afternoon. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to be even worse with temperatures approaching 100.


The heat is one thing, but this humidity—oh, this humidity. I feel like a chicken under a broiler every time I step outside. Being of Irish and Scottish heritage, I tend to sweat easily and I have to change my shirt every time I come back in from walking the dog. Am I living in Pennsylvania or Florida?


My normally energetic German Shorthair Pointer doesn’t much like the heat either. I feel Cassie pulling me in the direction of shade whenever I take her out on the leash. After fifteen minutes in the heat, she’s ready to come back into the air conditioning to take a long drink in her water bowl and then collapse onto the floor.


All of this brings to mind a question: How did we manage to survive the summers 50 or 60 years ago when we didn’t have air conditioning?


That’s right, all you Millennials and Gen Zers out there: There was a time not so long ago when the typical American household didn’t have central air. Our old farmhouse in Montgomery County sure as heck didn’t have A/C back then and neither did most other houses on our quiet country road—at least until the empty field across the street was developed in the 1970s and suddenly we in the old neighborhood were outnumbered by the new families living in air conditioned comfort.


It’s true that it wasn’t quite as hot back then as it is today. We rarely hit 100 degrees in the summer and 90-plus days usually didn’t go on for long before a thunderstorm would push through and cool things off.


According to data from the National Weather Service, in the Philadelphia area the thermometer only hit 100 degrees once in the 1970s and that was in July of 1977, the year I graduated from high school. After that, we didn’t hit 100 degrees again until 1988. Since then, the month of July has had 100-plus-degree days in six of the past 30 years.


Still, even if our parents could have afforded central air, I doubt they would have gone for it. To sweat a little was considered a good thing. It wasn’t until the 1980s that we got our first window air conditioners in the living room and the upstairs master bedroom, and even then, Dad didn’t want to turn them on, not only because they raised the electric bill but because he didn’t like to be in a closed-up house.


In lieu of air conditioners, we had fans, which didn’t do much except move the hot air around throughout the house. Every bedroom had one, as did the living room and the kitchen.


My brother and I had a big box fan in the window of the tiny room that we shared on the second floor. That box fan ran on high all night long, working tirelessly (and loudly) in a valiant effort to bring fresh night air into our stuffy, body-heated room. I would sleep without a shirt and with my head at the bottom of the bed so I could catch an occasional welcome draft of air.


Yes, it was tough sleeping—tough doing anything, really—but it was all we knew. Mom did her best to keep the house tolerable during those hot summer days. In the morning as soon as she got up, she would shut all the house windows and shades in an attempt to retain the cool night air for as long as possible.


But there was only so much she could do in an old, thick-walled house like that, and as the summer sun ascended the sky outside, so did the temperatures in the house, until it became like an oven.


For relief during the day, our only choice was to go outside and seek natural ways to cool off. Outside, there was usually a breeze, and there were trees to give shade—big trees like the great catalpa tree that towered high in the back yard. The sun had no chance of getting through that canopy of limbs and leaves the size of elephant ears. We would lie in the hammock beneath the catalpa while listening to the rattle of cicadas and watching a parade of big black ants make their way across the dusty ground.


As we didn’t have our own pool, sometimes we would jump in the car and go to the local public pool. More often, though, we would attach a sprinkler to the outside hose and run screaming through the spray. Let me tell you: that water, pumped from a well fifty feet in the ground, was as cold as a spring-fed stream and would quickly do the trick of lowering our body temperatures.


Another option: take off our shoes and shirts and go for a swim in the creek. Yeah, you had to watch for leaches, but there weren’t that many, and it was worth it for the relief.


I tell you all this more out of nostalgia than to advocate for a return to the practices of another day and time. In a world that has seen the ten warmest years on record occurring over the past decade, unless you happen to live in the far northern climes, it is no longer practical to think that people could survive very well without air conditioning, and I feel sorry for those families who can’t afford it.


For better or worse, we live today in an air-conditioned world, and if things continue the way they’re going, our dependence on central air will only become more so in the years ahead.


As for me, I’m hoping for a break in this heat wave so I spend more time outside again. I suspect Cassie is as well.

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