No AC? How Did We Survive?

For July 27, 2022

There’s lots of talk these days about just how hot it really is. The hottest temperature recorded in our state so far was July 14, 1954 when the thermometer reached 118* in Warsaw. That’s a fer piece from our neck of the woods but that same day the mercury rose to 115* in my hometown of St. Louis. So it was probably hot in Doniphan.

Since I had been alive just a few days over a year, I don’t remember the summer of ‘54, but I do recall hearing stories. Mom and Dad lived in a third-floor apartment. I need an ice pack just thinking about what that must have been like.

No one talked about heat indexes back then. That came on the scene in the 1970’s. The index measures how quickly our sweat evaporates to cool us off. We Missourians love to boast about our humidity levels. Maybe this heat spell will put a damper on the show-off attitude in the show-me state. We’re hardly alone in this hellacious predicament.

Did ANYONE have air conditioning way back then - in the 50’s? (Ancient Egyptians had their own creative version that involved cutting reeds, wetting them down, then hanging them in a window that had a breeze. So much work)! I need another ice pack.

By a decade into the twenty-first century, roughly 88 percent of American households had AC’s, but very few of us had air conditioning in what I USED to consider modern times. Thanks to that Willis Carrier fella, who developed the first air conditioner on a large scale way back in 1902, the average Joe could go to the movies or a store to get cooled off.

The window unit was invented in 1945 by Robert Sherman. Apparently it was slow catching on. During my 16 years growing up in StL, we never owned one. When we moved to Ripley County in 1969, it was still not a part of my experience, nor was it when I began teaching in 1975 at the middle school. Classrooms were air conditioned into the mid-80’s only if teachers provided the window units. Oh, the memories. Somebody bring me another ice pack.