Life Before AC – The Good Old Days

I was talking today with a neighbor whose AC was not working. The poor lady was in a real panic. The AC repairman had listened to her plight and promised relief – next week. My neighbor – let’s call her Sandy – was beside herself with worry. She was positive plants would die, children would fall ill and all of the furniture in her home would fall apart as the glue that held it together slowly seeped out of the joints.

True, it was over 100 degrees today. True, it was very humid. True, Sandy was too young to remember life pre-air conditioning, but I knew in my heart that neither she – nor her furniture- were in any real danger. After all, many more of us have lived without AC than have lived with it. It is, in the grand scheme of things, a fairly new luxury.

There was even a time before we had electric fans. The nearest you could get to moving air was to use one of the paper fans on a stick that usually came from the local funeral home and almost always had a picture of Jesus on it. Or, if you were lucky, you might have children who knew how to fold their simplex paper back and forth, bend it in the middle and produce a small fan that could, at least, cool your face.

One possibility for getting a little cooler was to leave the entry door open so air could come through the screen door. Of course, you had to be sure there were no holes in the real screen they used, or else you might have to get one of those yucky fly paper strips that hung down into so many kitchens back then.

Sandy finally went in to fix everyone a cold drink using the ice that came out of her refrigerator door. That reminded me of another way to get cool pre-AC, and pre-refrigerator. There was a time when people had ice boxes. Real ice boxes. They held only the big block of ice that the ice man brought a couple of times a week. You could hear the horse clopping down the street and knew it wouldn’t be long before the ice man used the big tongs to bring in the ice and the ice pick to chip away a few pieces for everyone to rub on their faces. It was amazing how much happiness those litttle chips could bring.

After a bit, Sandy suggested her children spend time in the big pool in their back yard. Needless to say, that brought up a couple of other memories. Before home pools were invented, kids loved to run through the spray from a water hose and spent many happy hours doing so. Before that, well, I remember drawing water from my grandmother’s well. It was cold and tasted wonderful. After each of us had quenched our thirst, we were allowed to pour a dipperful over our heads. What a wonderful way to cool down.

When Sandy gave her children popsicles for a treat, I just had to tell her my all time favorite way of beating the heat, pre-AC. It involved ice chips, salt, home made ice cream and the chance to sit on the freezer to hold it down as an adult cranked the handle. Even though I sat on the towel covering the top, it got really cold. I was usually shivering by the time the ice cream was ready, no matter how hot the day.

I could have given Sandy many more examples of ways to beat the heat without the AC. I hadn’t even told her about some of the things my grandparents did to get cool – like skinny dipping in the creek. Sandy decided, though, that her best bet was to take a cold shower and fashion one of those little folded fans. I left her looking for paper and went home to turn off my AC and to dig out my ice cream freezer.

I hope Sandy gets her AC fixed quickly. She doesn’t have memories of the good old days when staying cool meant fanning yourself or rubbing ice chips on your face – or a dozen other ways we found to beat the heat.

I hope Sandy’s washer doesn’t break down anytime soon, but if it does, I have lots of stories about using lye soap and a long pole to push clothes around in a big pot. Or about our first washing machine with the wringer you had to turn by hand. On the days we used those, we were very glad to have our fans on a stick or a few chips of ice.