Growing up in South Texas, air conditioning was a dream that remained an unattainable dream for most of my childhood. Everyone in the house had a fan that provided some relief for the summer heat at night. When I was in my early high school years, my fan was inherited from my great grandmother, Ella Barber. It was a box fan, but it was an ancient ancestor to the cheap plastic box fans that we buy today. The actual fan blade was made of metal, and it was behind metal fins. It was held together by wood at the top and bottom and had a cord that was covered with cloth not plastic.
As kids we would put our mouth close to the fan and talk like a robot or pass a playing card through the fins and marvel at the sound it made as the blades hit the paper. I loved that fan.
It was early summer, about 1971. I had just gotten out of school for the summer, and the prospects for adventure were thrilling. One night as I got ready to go to bed, my fan began to
spark and fill my room with smoke. Then it died….forever! That night was just the first of an entire summer of South Texas nights that I would spend without a fan. Looking back, I can hardly imagine how I survived, but I did. I can tell you one thing: I didn’t take a lot of naps in the afternoon.
Sometimes even in South Texas the weather at night would turn cool. I can remember lying on my bed when a thunderstorm began to roll just after I went to bed. It was a long time before the rain came in as a cool wind began to blow the curtains of my window. I remember sleeping like a kid without a care in the world and thinking: “This must be what air conditioning is like.”
During the summer I went to a Christian Camp between Bandera and Medina called Camp Bandina on the Medina River. The days were hot but one of highlights of the day was visiting the famous swimming hole on the river.
One day during a particularly hot day in early August, we assembled for the evening devotional. The devotional may have started out hot, but a bank of clouds started rolling in from the north. Then it happened. The wind that had driven the clouds over us finally hit blowing dust in the air, and it was cold but it didn’t rain. We were just bathed in a welcome blast of frigid breeze for the entire devotional and the rest of the night. It was one of the most memorable summer nights I have ever experienced.
About the time I was a Junior in High School, my dad bought a big window unit air conditioner that he put in the living room. It cooled the whole house. What a brave new world it was.
Thinking about all of this brings to mind how cheated my kids and grandkids are to have missed the full experience of summer nights. It’s no wonder they spend all of their time playing video games and watching TV. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have air conditioning.
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