Your Mom's birthday is Saturday. It is usually the longest day of the year. I think the official start of Summer this year is Sunday. Let the celebration begin.
I have resisted turning on the air conditioner so far this year. Part of the reason is because I'm cheap. Another part of me remembers the City Club in the 1950's. Nobody had air conditioning. The big old City Club building had screens on every window and doorway. If you ever look at old pictures of the building you will see large screens necessary for covering the huge entryways with an average size screen door nestled within for customers.
I remember the electric fans. There were no ceiling fans but lots of floor fans and some window units. At 7:00 AM, my Grandma Myrna would open most doors and windows to let cooler morning air into the building. The tavern officially opened for business at 8:00 AM The major bar-room faced east receiving the morning sun. Any window that didn't have a fan, had a pulled shade. So if you were a customer, you came into a darken bar room with the sound of fans everywhere.
Mornings were fairly comfortable but as the warm summer days "heated up", you had to rely on fans moving lots of air to be comfortable. Sometimes in the early afternoon my Dad would drive our family out to Elkhart Lake to the public beach to go swimming. It was a cheap way to stay cool.
By the end of a hot summer day, the City Club would get very warm. The key was to keep serving cold beer, cold soda and mixed drinks with lots of ice cubes. Automatic ice machines worked overtime.
So for the last few weeks I did like we did at the City Club. I opened windows and doors of our house as early as possible and let cool morning air blow in. I turned on some key ceiling fans (that we didn't have at the City Club). As I walked through the high ceiling living room with open screen doors, for one brief moment I had haunting recollections of City Club.
The lesson Grasshoppers is that discomfort is relative. Somehow my family survived hot summer days at the City Club without "air". As the world gets more populated and energy shortages become common, maybe we will return to days of yesteryear. You too might have to live without air conditioning. Ohooooooooo Nooooooooooooo!
Love,
Dad