Hot Times

By Elaine Viets

Our air-conditioning died and Don and I waited two days for a new system. It was a blast from the past, a return to the old-fashioned summers I'd forgotten.
We live in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where air-conditioning is not a luxury – it's a necessity. This is one of the hottest summers on record. The temperatures are in the mid-eighties, which feel like the mid-nineties. The humidity is a sticky, steamy 66 percent.
That's a lot like summers in the Midwest when Don and I were growing up. Neither of our families had air-conditioning back then.

How did we stay cool?
We didn't.
In the good old days, summer was a miserable season, and sleep was nearly impossible. Many city people would take their bedding and sleep in the local parks. Heaven help the petty thief who got caught in the midst of those cranky, sleepless adults and crying babies.

Some soaked a sheet in cold water, wrapped themselves in the wet sheet, and then crawled into bed. It worked, but it was no fun waking up in soggy sheets the next morning. Other sufferers dragged their mattresses to "sleeping porches," fire escapes, or balconies, to catch a bit of breeze.
Don and I did not sleep on our narrow condo balcony, but we turned on the overhead fans and took lots of cold showers during two long, sweaty nights, hoping to fall asleep while we were still fairly cool. The second night was a four-shower night.
It took our air-con crew more than nine hours to install our new system, including three brutal hours for them in the broiling sun on the flat, tarry condo roof. By seven-thirty that night, Don and I were cool.

But those hot days revived old memories of life before air-conditioning:
Fans hummed night and day, and in densely packed cities and suburbs, we could hear our neighbors' radios, TVs and arguments. Especially arguments. The neighborhood rumor mills would be churning the next morning at the ladies' kaffee klatches – which were held over iced tea. Remember, many women back then were stay-at-home moms.
Women got up at dawn, while it was still reasonably cool, to do the day's cooking, roasting and baking. Some women, like my grandmother, had a "summer kitchen" – an old stove in the basement, and they cooked down there. That's where the ironing was done, too. Those cool-looking cottons required hours of hot labor.

People went to the movies. Movie houses were air-conditioned long before many other businesses. Any air-conditioned business was popular in the summer. Our local Rexall Drug Store boasted a proud sticker of a shivering penguin that said, "Come in! We're cool." They were, too. And their fountain had good Cokes.

Other families escaped their sweat boxes by taking drives. Cars back then had vent windows – the "poor-man's air conditioning." See the vent windows in this old Mercury station wagon? Hot-and-bothered front seat passengers cooled down, thanks to them. (Click the car to see the full photo.) We kids got to sit in the back of the station wagon with the big tailgate window rolled down. We were not as well-behaved as the little darlings in this ad, either. My brothers and I bickered the whole time: "Mom, he's looking at me funny." "Mom, she's got her foot on my side!"
Seatbelts didn't exist yet. Cars in those unregulated days were unsafe at any speed.
So here's my old-fashioned family going for a drive: Dad, hot and sweaty after a day's work, is at the wheel. Mom, tired of coping with the heat, household chores, and squabbling kids, is in the passenger seat, trying to ignore us. We kids, hot and cranky, are pushing our parents almost to the breaking point. Almost. We knew if we went too far, Dad would turn around and drive right back home. Not cool.

My father would drive us to a soft-serve ice cream stand in Cool Valley, a tiny St. Louis suburb that really was cooler than our house back then. It's been mostly paved over now. We all got chocolate-dipped cones, which we ate outside the car so we wouldn't drip it all over everything. There was an art to eating a dip cone: if you bit into it wrong, the chocolate would fall on the ground.
Here's the only good thing I discovered during our return to the past: I craved ice cream. Really craved it. Ice cream tastes better if you don't live in air-conditioning.
But I'll give up that small pleasure for a cool house.

Last day to win The Art of Murder, my new Dead-End Job hardcover mystery set at a museum. Go to www.elaineviets.com and click Contests.

Comments

[Karen in Ohio]

Florida, Arizona, Texas, Nevada--none of those places would be more than wilderness, still, without air conditioning. And look at a desert area like Dubai. It would simply not exist if it weren't for good old A/C.

We used to hang our heads in the window at night, or our feet. Or both. My mom was smart about keeping the house dark all day, and closed up, and then when the sun went down she'd open the windows and turn on the fan to get the built-up heat out and get some air circulating.

Good times.

[Charlaine Harris]

I remember staying at my aunt's house in Texas, and it was not air-conditioned. However, the heat was much dryer there than it was in Mississippi, and as long as the fans were blowing it was tolerable. If you didn't move around too much.

[Kay Hudson]

I know what you mean--I lived in Wisconsin as a child and south Florida as a teen. But now I live in the Houston suburbs, and temps in the 80s and humidity below 70% sounds like mild spring weather!Glad you've gotten your home back in order.

[Elaine Viets]

Air-conditioning really did settle all three of those places, Karen. I have no idea how people survived Florida summers without it. We don't even have cool basements -- most of Florida is at sea level and basements flood.

[Elaine Viets]

The key words are "if you didn't move around too much," Charlaine. Don's father used to soak the house with a garden house at night to cool it off.

[Elaine Viets]

Houston really has been hot this year, Kay -- a real griddle this summer.

[Sally Schmidt]

Grew up in Indiana. I forgot how humid it is until I went back there to live for a while. The cousins I visited a couple of years ago still don't have air condition. They claim they don't need it. Wrong. Lived in Florida for a few years. Still remember the first time I came out of an air-conditioned restaurant and my glasses fogged up from the heat and humidity. Now we are in Northern California - don't let the North part fool you. Summer temps regularly in the upper 90's and low 100's. Like yesterday - 104. And the dry heat thing? 104 is HOT wet or dry!

[Elaine Viets]

I'm with you on the "dry heat," Sally. I was in Vegas when it was 104 and people kept saying, "but it's a dry heat."
So's my oven.
The dry heat people are like a religious cult. They are true believers.

[Karen in Ohio]

Now wait a minute, because that "dry heat" thing is real. Up to a point.

We were in Salt Lake City once, when it was 95 degrees. But in the shade I was actually chilled, between the lack of humidity and the altitude.

But yeah, once you get to 104, especially in the city, it's disgusting. My uncle passed away last summer, and so we were in Phoenix in August. When I left for the airport I told me husband I was on my way to Hell.

[Elaine Viets]

Sorry, Karen, but I just can't feel that "dry heat" vibe. Hot is hot.

[Alan P.]

My first job was at a movie theater. It was 1980. The very first thing in the summer was to turn on the three A/C units. The summer of 1980 killed about 150 people from the heat. It was over 100 most of July and August. I remember being outside at 2:00am and it was just below 90.

[Alan P.]

I spent two weeks on the edge of the Negev desert. It was 100 before noon each day. Then a few days in the desert, 105-110 each day. It was not the hot sticky heat of St. Louis, but you also didn't need a towel after swimming. About three steps and you would be bone dry. Oh, and falling asleep in the sun could mean waking up in an ER.

[Elaine Viets]

That was a terrible summer, Alan, and seemed to go on forever. Desert sun is really a killing force. I had a signing in Phoenix when it was 110 and wanted to walk back to my hotel, two blocks away. The staff drove me. They said it was too dangerous.

[Storyteller Mary]

My dad was the master of the fans, outward to vent the heat, inward to bring in cooling breezes, and on the hottest nights, we kids slept on the living room floor with a cross breeze from open back and front doors, screened, but somehow mosquitos still found there way in. The Drive-In or the Muny helped "cool off" -- now we complain it's too hot there. Libraries were air conditioned early on, for the good of the books, but what a delight! I always thank the a.c tech when he does the seasonal checkup, esp. with allergies requiring closed windows.
The summer of the storytelling conference in Oklahoma City, we were very conscious of walking on the shady side of the streets when out and about. The conference center was so chilly (the standard was set to be comfortable for middle-aged men in suits -- truth!) that the hotel had decorated beds with a throw that could be worn as a stole.

[Elaine Viets]

Summer is the freezin' season indoors in Florida, Mary. Some restaurants feel like meat lockers. But I bring a sweater and don't complain. The Muny, for non-St. Louisans, is the city's lovely Municipal Opera, which features musicals. It's outdoors and some singers have swallowed bugs during the performances.

[Diana Belchase]

A real blast from the past. Thanks for the memories!

[Elaine Viets]

It is a blast -- but not cold one, Diana.

[Toni LP Kelner]

When I first moved up to Massachusetts, we got by a year or two with no AC. Then we added one to the bedroom, so at least we could sleep in comfort. (My sister-in-law was staying with us for part of that time, and she slept on our bedroom floor to share to coolness.) Later we added one to the office, so I could work during the day. Later still, the living room/dining rom, so I could go downstairs during the day. We currently have four units--three window units and one built-in-to-the-wall, and the whole house is cool. I'm spoiled.

[Elaine Viets]

Our condo had a family from Mass move in. The first year, their car didn't have air conditioning. By the second year, they had a new car. We're all spoiled, Toni.