Air conditioning changed everything.

People used to sit on their front stoops, hoping to get a little relief from the heat as the evening breeze played over their bodies. Now, they stay inside their air-conditioned houses, and they don't know their neighbors.

Skip Gates' neighbor didn't know who he was; that's why she called the cops. And that led, round-abouts to the Kegger Summit at the White House.

Summer Is Different

I worked in a dime store when I was in high school. Kids today don't know what a dime store is, but it was sorta like a Dollar Store, only when money was worth more.

Smack dab in the center of the store was a candy counter. On one side, there were bins of various candies. You'd tell the candy girl you wanted a pound of Maple Nut Goodies, and a pound of Vanilla Nut Clusters, and she'd bag them up for you in a flat white bag, marking the bag with the price and the weight. On the other side, there were penny candies - yes, you could buy a piece of candy for just a penny, honest injun. And there'd be a display where you select different flavors of Lifesavers, and different gums, Juicy-Fruit, Beeman's, Doublemint, Clark's Teaberry, Wrigley Spearmint, and Black Jack.

Come summer, you wouldn't find any chocolate candies at the dime store, and you wouldn't find any nut candies, either. The chocolate candies would melt. The nut candies would hatch out bugs.

In The Sixties

In the 1960s, stores started getting air conditioning. They were slow to arrive. The movie houses got air conditioning in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and they ran big signs saying to come on inside, because it's cool. People would go to the same movie, night after night, just to get some sleep.

We were sorta lucky, living out in the country. We had lots of trees around the house, and a nice cross breeze would cool us off in the evening, almost any night. Dad built a fan from an industrial motor and I don't know where he got the blade. It was about 24" square, and about 10" or 12" deep, with a box of 3/4" plywood. I bet it weighed 30 pounds. And when you plugged in it, it roared. You couldn't hear anything, but you didn't hear anybody complaining, unless they were upstream of the fan. It did a lot better job of cooling if it was aimed at you, rather than you being on the suction side.

Methodists Don't Drink

Methodists don't drink. At least, they aren't supposed to. We had a minister in the 1960s who cooked with wine. He explained to the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee that he did so, and that all the alcohol was boiled off before the food was cooked. They said OK, but don't mention it to anyone, keep the bottles out of sight, and go out of the county to buy your wine.

But in the hot days of August, Mom would send Dad up to the tavern to buy a cold bucket of beer. I mentioned that to Blondie, and she was flabberghasted. She had never heard of beer being sold by the bucket, but it was, none the less. And this was after the kids were sent to bed; we weren't supposed to know about it, but of course, kids being kids, we did.

When Dad died, I wrote a eulogy, saying everything I needed to know about life, I learned from my Dad, and the preacher wrote it. One of the things I thanked him for was teaching me that there's nothing quite so good as a really cold beer on a really hot night, and if you didn't drink more than one beer a night nor more a dozen beers a year, you wouldn't hurt yourself. The preacher read that line, and then he stopped and said that he was sure glad to see the second half of that thought, and maybe he agreed with it. First time I ever saw a Methodist preacher approve of beverage alcohol.

Nights In White Cotton

The Moody Blues recorded "Nights In White Satin" but I slept on cotton sheets, and they weren't high-thread count Egyptian cotton, either. It was coarse-weave cotton, rough on the skin, and we didn't object because we didn't know any better.

Some of the bedrooms got better ventilation than others, and but even if you were lying where the wind was perfect, it was just too damned hot to sleep, and the bed and bedclothes would be sodden before midnight. I've read lots of detective stories where the slattern couldn't sleep, and neither could the detective, so they made use of the bed in other ways, but when I was sharing a bed with a woman under those conditions, I was always too tired, hot and miserable to engage in friendly friction, and she never seemed to be particularly interested, either. Detectives must be made of sterner stuff than I was, or perhaps the writer was just full of baloney. I think the latter.

Mount Airy

When I lived in Mount Airy, a suburb of Cincinnati, I was on the top floor of a cheap-o complex. The air conditioning units didn't work on most of the units. My unit backed up against a bunch of trees, so I pulled some blankets out on the balcony, and lay on them, figuring that I might get a little breeze, and there wasn't much, but it was cooler than indoors. Nobody could see anything, and I lay above the sheet, nude.

I had been laying there, silently, for about an hour when I heard a little noise from below. The floor was wood planks, with slots between the planks. Seems like the couple that lived below me had the same idea. Her nightgown, wet with perspiration, clung to her every curve as if it were painted on. She lay down, got up about 30 seconds later, removed her nightgown and lay down again. He came out, wearing boxer shorts and lay beside her.

It was too hot to sleep, I was bored stiff, the lights at my level were all off, so I couldn't be seen; I watched through the cracks. After about two minutes, he reached over for her, as if he were a detective and she was a slattern. I think he was actually a body shop man, and his wife was a secretary. She was gangly, no beauty queen, but with her body gleeming from sweat, she wasn't half bad.

She scolded him, that it was just too damned hot, and he could damned well leave her alone. Ouch. He went back inside. Two hours later, it cooled off quite a bit, and I drew the sheet over me. Thirty minutes after that, it started raining, those glorious huge splats of rain, and being on the top floor, there was no balcony above to shelter me.

There was lightning as well. I grabbed my blankets and scurried inside. From the sound of things, the lady downstairs was doing the same. I spent the rest of the night in a tilt-back chair, just inside the sliding glass doors to the balcony. Ah, sleep to the acutely fatigued man is like manna from the heavens.

The White House Kegger

All sorts of comments are being made, here and there, about the White House Kegger, as if it really mattered what brand of beer the guys were drinking. Blondie said that the women involved - the woman across the street and the 9-1-1 operator - were the only ones involved who weren't accused of wrongdoing, and they're being left out as if it was some sort of male bonding thingie. Meanwhile, there are lawyers getting involved, and union reps, and everybody and his brother.

The White House issued a correction. Obama isn't going to be drinking a Something, he's going to be drinking a Something Light. Like that matters? Some congressman complained that they're not drinking domestic brews, or brews made in his district or something like that. Like that matters?

Silly Season

Before Air Conditioning, many businesses shut down for a couple of weeks during the really hot weather, for vacation. Back home, we had the county fair the last two weeks of August, and many of the retailers shut down their stores at noon each day, and had booths at the county fair instead.

In the journalism business, they called August "silly season" because anyone who had any sense and seniority would take off and spend time at the cottage. While the regular editor was at Lake James or up on Point Pelee, someone junior would be acting as editor. While the officials in the county offices were taking time off, there was no news being generated there. The sheriff's deputies were all working at the fair, but it didn't matter, because the criminals weren't stupid enough to be exerting themselves in that weather.

So these substitute editors would be scrounging around for something, anything, to fill up the spaces between the ads. Postal regulations demanded that a newspaper could only be 75% ads, or they'd lose their 2nd class mailing privileges. A second-class ticket means in-county newspapers could be mailed for almost free, and it also meant you got to run legal notices, which are the most profitable advertising a newspaper runs.

Gotta Run SOMETHING

So in order to fill the columns, anything that passed for news would run, and many things that were too preposterous to make the paper at all at other times would make the front page. Silly articles, because it was silly season. And the substitute editors didn't just have fun running these screwy stories, they felt an obligation, a duty, to run these stories.

Of course, they sent these stories upstream to the news service, to United Press or to International Press or Associated Press, and because they had substitutes working the desks, they sent these silly stories around to all the member newspapers.

The Greatest Invention

And it's all because air conditioning wasn't widely available. If you were to ask me what the greatest invention of the 20th century was, I'd like to tell you it was the computer, or perhaps the automobile, or maybe nuclear energy. Indoors plumbing didn't arrive until the middle of the 20th century to much of America, and let me tell you, indoor plumbing is without question the greatest invention of the 20th century.

But air conditioning is right up there at the top.

It looks like it's going to rain tonight. I wish there were still a beer garden atop the Woolworth Building. I think it'd be fun to go up there in the night air and share a brew with neighbors and trade funny stories and lies. It used to be wonderful fun to go to the former one-room school house over at Emerald, and play Progressive Bid Euchre, whether it was frozen out, and the furnace was sending a blast of hot arid air right at you, or if it was summer, and all the windows were open, and the cards would be sticky from the humidity.

And I'd like to go down to the brewery tonight, and have myself a Milk Stout, rain or no rain. But I was raised Methodist. I'm not allowed. Tell you what, you have one for me. And be sure to flirt with the barmaid, too.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
air conditioning - Black Jack - bucket of beer - candy girl - coarse cotton sheets - detective novels - dime store - euchre - eulogy - indoor plumbing - kegger summit - Methodists - Milk Stout - Mount Airy - silly season - Teaberry - thunderstorm