I grew up hearing the stories.
My dad and my grandparents would regale me with stories about what it was like living down here without air conditioning.
Of course, I grew up inside a house that had central air conditioning. And at the time, I was a kid who was pretty much impervious to heat and humidity it seemed. During the Summer months, I was out of the air conditioning as quick as I could get my chores done and my mom would let me. I was outside during all the peak heating hours riding bikes, playing games and swimming in a nearby pool. It was such a great way to grow up. But I can still remember the tales about having to get up hours and hours before the sun came up just to get the farm work done. Once the peak heating hours came along, there was just no working. All one could do was hope for breeze and find a piece of shade. Well, I didn’t really have an appreciation for all that until I went a month without air conditioning last August. That was the result of me gambling on my old heat pump to get through one more Summer. I lost and had to wait just over 4 weeks before a new residential HVAC unit was installed. That was a brutal period of time. I found every reason I could to stay inside the zone controlled HVAC of the office each night. And weekends were spent submerged in my neighbor’s pool. My hat’s off to my ancestors for doing Summer here without any air conditioning at all. I know for sure that I’m not up to it.