Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Back when I was growing up, they had air conditioning. Please notice I said “they” had air conditioning. I did not say “we” had air conditioning. Who was they? Well, back then, I thought it was everybody except us. Even some restaurants and motels had air conditioning. I know this because they had red neon signs hanging in their windows that said so. I did not know this because we ate out or stayed in motels. We did neither, but I wanted to. I wanted to go live in one of those motels, but Mama wouldn’t let me because my hometown of Rainsville didn’t have a motel back then.

Ken, my across the highway buddy, had air conditioning. They had central air conditioning. His daddy bought a little rectangular box that he hung in a window in the central part of their house. It only cooled the central part of their house, but it was better than what “we” had. I spent a lot of time at Ken’s house, especially in July and August!

We had a window fan, or as Mama was prone to say a “winder fan.” While that may not be the proper pronunciation of the word, it does adequately describe what it did. It simply created wind. It didn’t actually cool the air…it just moved it around. Ours actually did set in the window. We had those big wooden windows that we raised by hand and held open with a long wooden stick. In the back bedroom, where we kept our window fan, it was a perfect fit and the fan held up the raised window.

Our fan was the deluxe model. I had six speeds. It was reversable, with three speeds each way. The high speed sounded like an airplane taking off. I had never flown on an airplane, but I imagined that was what one sounded like. We could set it to blow hot air into the house or suck hot air out of the house. Ours was normally set to blow out, except when my sister and I wanted to sing, holler, or yodel into the fan. Actually, neither of us knew how to yodel, but we sang into the fan it sounded like yodeling. Daddy did not appreciate our talents, and when he was home, we usually didn’t appreciate his response to our beautiful singing. 

We had to be careful around that fan when it was blowing out. On high speed, it would almost suck the hair right off your head. As a matter of fact, it did suck Billy Bob’s (fictitious) great Uncle Lonzo’s hair right off his head. When he wasn’t wearing a cap or hat on his head, he wore a toupee. It was a cheap piece and he never glued it down, but he should have. He got too close to that fan and it sucked his hairpiece right into the grill. Billy Bob and his sister were rolling on the floor laughing at such a sight. Uncle Lonzo’s fake hair was salt and pepper in color, to match what little hair he still had. It also matched Smokey, their old long-haired cat. When their Mama saw that hair on the fan’s grill, she thought it was ole Smokey about to be sucked into the fan. She threatened to kill those two…and they hadn’t even done anything!

Air conditioning is so common place these days that restaurants and motels don’t even have those neon signs anymore. I guess everybody really does have air conditioning these days. Everywhere except heaven, that is. Heaven doesn’t need it, and the other place can’t get it!