My AC went on the blink the other day and quit running...at 1PM (it was 99°F, on it's way to 104°). I called my AC "guy" named Sarah and she was on site by 3PM..thank God. And although the house hadn't really heated up but a few degrees, by then I was near panic thinking of a worst-case-scenario.
It was nothing but a blob of wet fuzz on a micro-switch that keeps a condensate pan from overflowing. By 4PM I was only a little miffed that my afternoon siesta had been interrupted.
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I remember well the old Cash homestead where I grew up. There was no AC...and probably wouldn't have known what to do with it if we had it. The kitchen and front room had a large swamp cooler that kept it "near" tolerable. But other than that all we had was a few box fans sitting about.
The "boys" room was the upstairs attic, accessed by stairs (a modified ladder) from the back porch. We kept a box fan in the one gable window there. God had placed a large elm tree close by and the air sucked in to the room was somewhat filtered by elm shade. Although it worked well at night, being in the attic on a sunny summer day was usually avoided.
My favorite spot on hot afternoons was on the east side of the old detached garage by the vegetable garden. Sitting on an inverted No. 10 washtub with cold well water running from a hose is a too-often-missed pastime nowadays I'm sure.
During the few hours I was recently without my AC I thought about how I endured the summers back then. I don't really remember being all that uncomfortable because that's just the way it was. I realized how dependent I had become on my climate control. My, my don't things change in seventy some odd years.
I was kind of trying to talk myself into thinking a day or two without AC wouldn't be too bad...I was also thinking about that cold AC in a room at the local Motel 6 that I would have nabbed if Sarah had delivered bad news. 😉
That's cool! (get it? ha ha)
I just finished reading a story that may fit you if you were 11 years old today, the names have been modified so I don't violate copyright laws and get sued.
Young Paden 2023
Things have been pretty smooth and uneventful for 11-year-old Michael Cash on his family’s 18-hour road trip to South Dakota so far, but unfortunately it seems that disaster is imminent now that he’s about to watch the funniest part of Nacho Libre with a very full bladder.
Stuck on a long stretch of highway with no rest stops for miles, Michael is undoubtedly regretting his decision to drink nearly an entire two-liter bottle of blue Hawaiian Punch over the course of the last hour, especially knowing that the hilarious scene where Jack Black’s sidekick throws corn at a villain’s eye is coming up, which makes him laugh so hard that he more or less loses all bodily control. Further tempting fate, Michael is resting his iPad on his lap, putting undue pressure on a lower abdomen that is filled to the bursting point with urine. Now beginning to squirm and sweat a little in his seat as he struggles to maintain agency over his bladder, it’s becoming increasingly clear that he won’t be able to withstand Nacho Libre’s unyielding onslaught of physical comedy and gut-busting one-liners much longer before the pressure becomes too much to bear and he depletes his massive reservoir of piss all over the backseat of his dad’s Ford Focus.
Yikes. If only Michael had used the bathroom at the gas station 40 miles ago like his parents told him to instead of just playing Pokémon Go in the parking lot, he wouldn’t be in this dire situation. His only hope now is to swallow his pride and ask his parents to pull over so he can pee on the side of the highway—otherwise he doesn’t stand a chance.
Hang in there, buddy!
We didn't even have box fans. I remember there being one fan with blades that might have formed a 12-14 inch circle. It normally only came out when Mom was canning because the heat and humidity from that processing would make the old kitchen almost intolerable. The standard was to simply open every window in the house and accept whatever breeze came along. That was the old T-shaped story and a half house built about 1890 based on newspapers that were pasted to the sheeting to help seal off the small gaps. We found the sheeting/newspapers over Christmas break of 1964 as we tore the house down to supply some of the lumber for the new house.
The new house did not have A/C of any kind installed.
Farmers and farm wives spend most of their time working in whatever the weather happens to be. This was prior to tractors with cabs and little air conditioning units installed in those cabs. Dad never owned a tractor or combine that had a cab.
The new house did not have A/C of any kind installed.
Just whom do you think yer foolin'? Mrs. Cow sent this picture of you and what you bought with a Tax Refund check to wit:
@flga-2-2
You neglected to show the rest of the guys with me at the city park. Why pay to have one at home when this one is free for all.
Why pay to have one at home when this one is free for all.
Nope, take a water sample from a public pool and have it analized. There are all kinds of things in there waiting to invade your person besides the ever present urine and feces.
My favorite spot on hot afternoons was on the east side of the old detached garage by the vegetable garden. Sitting on an inverted No. 10 washtub with cold well water running from a hose is a too-often-missed pastime nowadays I'm sure.
That No. 10 washtub with cold water is in fashion these days. It's called a Cold "Ice" Water Plunge" tub. I just built a poor-mans version, 6ft x 2ft x 2ft metal trough with frozen water bottles.
Why pay to have one at home when this one is free for all.
Nope, take a water sample from a public pool and have it analized. There are all kinds of things in there waiting to invade your person besides the ever present urine and feces.
Uhh...I don't know about an "analized" water sample. Analyzing it sounds sooo much less painful. 😉
@flga-2-2
Do you really think my buddies and I care about your "analized" water sample? If there wasn't any urine or feces in there before we jump in, there definitely will be by the time we leave.
My ice water plunge last weekend.
We kept a box fan in the one gable window there.
As a kid, it was some great summer sleeping to make a pallet on the floor then create a wind tunnel by wrapping a sheet around the outside of the box fan and under the blanket on the floor. The whir of the fan and the breeze from the blades led to some good zzzzs.
Now I'm not sure I would be able to get off the floor in the morning if I tried that!
A good friend of mine passed away last year at 91 years of age. When he was a teenager, he worked every Summer for an uncle who had a contract to put up prairie hay near the Prairie Hay Capital of the World (Yates Center, Kansas). The crew would mow, rake, bale into small squares, stack the bales onto sleds, then pull the sleds to somewhere specific to pile near a railroad switch for eventual loading onto railcars. Typically, they did this seven days a week for about a solid month. Once each week they would travel a dozen miles into Yates Center to be treated to an evening feast of hamburgers and various other goodies at a cafe. While there they would refill the many gallons of water they would need to get them through the next week.
The entire crew would sleep on the bed of the one four-wheel trailer they had along. They would have liked sleeping on the ground but there were far too many rattlesnakes in those rocky hills to allow that.
https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm8Y7N_Yates_Center_Hay_Capital_of_the_World_Kansas
It’s so hot even the artificial flowers are dying.
It’s so hot I saw two hydrants fight over a dog.
It’s so hot I saw a chicken lay an omelette.
It’s so hot outside that I poured McDonald’s hot coffee on my lap just to cool off.
Glad that you got the ac fixed quickly. Mine went out a couple weeks ago. It was down for 9 days. Nights and mornings till about 1300 were good. Box fans and windows open. However the deer moving through the pastures and dog smelling them at 0430 and barking and going nuts woke me up. I would shut down the work computer about 1730 and head to check cows and eat dinner at the local place. Return home around 2100 and it was cooled back down. It hit 90 in the house around 1530 ish for those days. Luckily the wife and girls were up in PA and i held the fort down.
Man when the ponds got stagnant we use to use the water troughs all the time as kids to cool down. The local processing place had several ice machines and we would go up and fill buckets and feed sacks to cool the water down in Mississippi.
Back in my 'rounder' days I ran a little 24hr. store (that was also the Bethany, OK Greyhound Bus Station) that was the only thing open at night for miles around. I ran it at night and after the evening rush there was nothing happening, especially on hot summer nights.
The store had four overhead garage doors that were glazed with glass. With no AC I would open all the overhead doors at night and try to cool off the store.
I had a lot of regulars and it took a while to get to know everybody. One night about midnight on a hot August night a pickup pulled in and it was full of guys dressed in huge winter parkas complete with boots and gloves. I thought they were crazy.
They mulled around the store getting "lunch" stuff and soda pop as if it was just a regular day. I finally had to ask why in the hell they were all dressed like that...
They were on lunch break...from the ice plant a half mile away. One guy explained it was near 10 below inside the plant. Getting out for a half hour lunch felt great to all of them. And strange as it may seem their gear insulated them from the heat also.
They were regulars but I never got used to seeing someone in an arctic parka in Oklahoma in August.
@paden-cash Oh wow. I bet working in a ice plant was a unique experience. I look at myself now days and can say i have become a big spoiled wimp. Use to heat didnt bother me cold didn’t bother me. Now I am all about comfort . When I was running heavy equipment in my teens nothing bothered me at all. I could cook a bake potato on the exhaust and wedged between the engine block on a terex scraper and run 10 hours hauling dirt now I would have to stop and take a nap .
I never got used to seeing someone in an arctic parka in Oklahoma in August.
At Athens Arkansas, down in Howard co, there is a little store. The kind Mexicans that run it make the finest jalapeno egg chicken I've ever had.
I was down there working, and eating their fine lunch, and it's around 100 degrees in the shade. In walks this 20 something yr old with a toboggan, and coat. I ask if he was ok. He said he worked in a chicken processing plant freezer room. -10 degrees, and he was still thawing out.
I think I'll go get lunch there again. It's hard to forget a guy dressed for the north pole, in August!
N
When I was a professional turkey hanger I would sometimes be sent into the freezepack room. Probably at least one hundred feet by one hundred feet and boxes of turkeys and turkey parts stacked to the ceiling which was up maybe 18 feet or so. Kept those trips as short as possible. Sucks the air right out of your lungs.
Y'all can have that. I get cold just opening the beer cooler door at the 7-11.
