Blast from the Past
Keeping it cool when the heat is on
By Bill Fields
When I spent my last night in my childhood home — grown, gray and practically groaning from the aches of helping empty its considerable contents over several days — I went to bed upstairs comforted by a familiar sound I knew soon would be only a memory.
It was a hot summer evening, and the noise came from a window air conditioner that had been in the family for nearly 45 years, since I was a teenager. In old age the unit still cooled, even when set to the lowest of its three speeds, a limit mandated by my mother that I usually obeyed even after she was no longer living in the house.
Cranking up the temperature control to 6 or 7 (on a 1 to 10 dial) ensured a chilly output. The aging wonder wasn’t quiet by any means, and when it went through its cooling cycle it was as if the appliance was having a coughing fit before easing back into its customary sound.
Back in 1974 — I recall it arrived on East New Jersey Avenue in the days not long before Richard Nixon departed the White House — and in the following decade before central air was installed, the Sears purchase was situated in the living room and was powerful enough to cool most of the first floor.
That truly was a miracle summer of 20th century innovation. We had acquired cable television not long before, which meant the Atlanta Braves were on almost every night. The local access channel showed an endless loop of National Golf Foundation instructional films. And we could watch the Wilmington, Raleigh or Greensboro stations without having to adjust a finicky antenna.
During several months a year, though, the addition of AC seemed a bigger deal than acquiring cable TV, even to a very sports-minded boy. Shade trees, cold showers or electric fans could only do so much when the temperature soared in August.
I camped out on the carpet not far from the brand-new air conditioner for a couple of nights. Whether asleep or awake, it felt like our family had hit the jackpot because we now had the comfort of a motel room or restaurant at home when it was sweltering. After 18 holes in the heat or a steamy hour mowing the grass, nothing felt better than standing in front of the window unit for a quick, cold blast. Even my father, who liked to park himself shirtless on the back porch with a cold beer on toasty evenings pre-AC, got very used to the manufactured cooling.
A few years later, when I went off to college and a room without air conditioning — my dormitory’s location trumped its creature comforts by a long shot at the start of one semester and the end of the next if it was hot — I missed our AC dearly. My first summer in New York City, a decade later, out of stubbornness and thrift, I didn’t purchase a small window unit during a persistent heat wave and struggled to sleep despite a fan positioned as close to my bed as I could get it.
On trips home, I never had to worry about being too hot. The old reliable window unit was relocated upstairs after the house was equipped with central air. But the new system never seemed adequate for the second floor, making the original AC an important feature on my visits.
As the years went by, I kept expecting the window unit to fail each time I returned during hot weather, but it never did. Perhaps Mom’s speed restrictions had extended its life, or maybe they don’t make ’em like they used to. Like a baseball player closer to the end than the beginning who can still paint the black, it happily and capably pitched a few innings each summer in the week or so I would be in town. That last night home, I woke up with a blanket up to my chin. PS
Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.
